to it, in his pamphlet on the orders in council, saying, that "the 'Americans gravely debated once in Congress whether they should 'style themselves the most enlightened people in the world." By ' a natural progression or diversity in reading, the story now goes, as the British critic has it, "that the Americans debated during 'three successive days, whether they were not the greatest, wisest, 'bravest, most ingenious, and most learned of mankind." This is the shape (he concludes) in which it will doubtless be embalmed 'by the British historians.'

We must own that we were not quite aware that our statement was so well supported by contemporaneous authorities; for in hazarding the remark which has given so much offence, we leant almost entirely on the credit of Mr. John Bristed, counsellor at law, in the city of New-York. On the subject under consideration, this gentleman speaks as follows:

“The national vanity of the United States surpasses that of any other country, not even excepting France. It blazes out any where and on almost all occasions, in their conversation, newspapers, speeches, pamphlets and books. They assume it as a self-evident fact, that the Americans surpass all other nations in virtue, wisdom, valour, liberty, government, and every other excellence. All Europeans they profess to despise, as ignorant paupers and dastardly slaves. Even during president Washington's administration, Congress debated three days upon the important position, that America was the most enlightened nation on earth; and finally decided the affirmative by a small majority. And our present president, in his recent tour through the union, told the people of Kennebunk, in the District of Maine, that the United States were certainly the most enlightened nation in the world.”a

We can put up with a great deal, at the hands of persons who have just drawn the first breath of independence, and felt their limbs newly disengaged from the shackles: we can tolerate their shouting and skipping, and all the extravagance incident to a complete and unlooked for change; but when a class of men who have for generations been consorting with convicted felons, on the one hand, and with negro slaves on the other, start up all at once and insist upon calling themselves the most enlightened nation in the world, our patience and gravity are alike overcome, and it is utterly impossible to abstain from a jeer. We have accordingly on one or two occasions, made a little free with the bombast and pomposity of the American mind, as displayed in public proceedings and official documents; and we defy the most saturnine and hypochon

a [Mr. John Bristed is an Englishman :-and though he has become a citizen of the United States, he has not, it is seen, changed his character. Ed. L. & S. R.]

VOL. I.

28

driac of our order, even with all the horrors of Calvinism sitting on his heart, to read some of the papers that have fallen in our way, when perusing the annals of modern America, and to refrain from a smile. The writers of the Union have a manner of using our language which, at the best, gives it rather a foreign air; and which, when they attempt to make it the vehicle of a swelling thought, renders their composition extremely ludicrous. The author now before us, indeed, seldom ventures into the regions of the sublime, and is upon the whole one of the most correct and simple composers who have yet appeared in independent America. When, however, he allows himself to soar, one can instantly perceive by the manner of his flight that his wings were fledged beyond the Atlantic. For instance, when talking of steam-boats, those lubberly unclassical machines, he sees them in imagination, overcoming 'with unexampled velocity the powerful currents of our mighty rivers, and almost accomplishing the annihilation of space and time.' He exults in the ideal contemplation of a 'steam-frigate of gigantic size, moving on the waters of the Hudson, with the facility and 'force of motion, and the military faculties, which will insure in'vulnerability to the seaports of his country, and may give a new ' and desirable character to maritime warfare.' In one or two other places besides, he hazards a rise into the firmament of tropes, and uniformly vindicates his origin, as a son of the fresh and unsophisticated school of the new Hesperia. * * * * *

6

[The reviewer proceeds to give an analysis of the contents of the work. We will make one more extract from the British critic's remarks, as we think them excellent.]

It is not fair to extract sentences and parts of sentences from one volume of a review, and set them against similar extracts from another volume of the same performance, in an insulated fragmented form.-Nor ought the various communications in a literary journal to be tried by the same severe standard, which all men are at liberty to apply to the works of an individual author. Mr. Walsh must himself be satisfied, that in none of the leading periodicals of this country, has there been any remarkable change of opinion on the character of the Americans, whether as scholars, gentlemen, or statesmen. He may have found in some of their pages a few verbal incompatibilities, which an industrious gleaner could set in opposite array, and clothe with the appearance of selfcontradiction; but we are confident, he has not found the general spirit in any one of them materially altered, nor, upon the whole, a more favourable judgment pronounced relative to his native country. The subjects of attack, as practised against the United States by the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, are generally speaking their want of literature-ignorance of science and the arts-barbarism in their manners, and savageness in their amusements and con

tests arrogance and haughtiness, with an overweening self-conceit-intoxication, dirt, and slavery. Of the former journal, Mr. Walsh remarks, that it is 'jocose at our expense, through pertness ' and arrogance;' whilst the latter is so from national fears and 'monarchical antipathy:' and 'the leer of the one is, accordingly, 'only smirking, while that of the other is sardonic.'

[From the Quarterly Review.-Lond. Mar. 1820.]

ART. XII.-Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, an Historical Tragedy. By John Howard Payne.

THE influence of the drama on the manners of a nation and its habits of thinking, few will question, who have considered the subject with the attention which it deserves. It is idle to calculate the extent of that influence by the number of specific characters formed, or actions done in direct imitation of dramatic personages; such are, rather, instances of mania, arising from a coincidence of irritable temperament with very favouring circumstances, and rarely to be found; in ordinary cases, the glowing enthusiasm, which the representation kindles within us, may indeed affect our dreams, but is cooled by the realities of the morrow. The moral influence, however, does not perish with it-it goes to strengthen the mass of opinions and feelings previously engendered by similar representations. It would be too much to say that the drama has formed the national character; that undoubtedly is the result of many other, and more important circumstances: but we have no doubt, that the two act powerfully on each other; the national character is impressed strongly on the drama, while our drama is not the least potent of many agents to form and to cherish the peculiarities of our national character.

Entertaining these opinions, we watch with peculiar interest the progress of dramatic poetry, and the state of dramatic taste amongst our countrymen. We confess that we have no reason to congratulate them on either. We do not remember a single good tragedy of modern date; Mr. Coleridge's Remorse and Mr. Milman's Fazio, indeed, considered merely as proofs of poetic talent, are distinguished performances, though we think them very imperfect as plays. But if the productions themselves are not honourable to their authors, their fate seems to us to be decided in a way still less creditable to their judges. Chance, caprice, party, any thing but true principles appears to direct the judgment of a first audience, a judgment which, when unfavourable, with peculiar, and unreasonable hardship, is both summary and without appeal.

Brutus is, or has been, a favourite with the public; and though,

after what we have just said, we shall not be expected to submit our own opinion to that judgment, yet we owe it so much of deference at least, as not to differ from it essentially, without assigning our reasons. Mr. Payne tells us, that he has had no hesitation in adopting the conceptions and language of his predecessors, whereever they seemed likely to strengthen the plan which he had prescribed to himself.' We have no right to dictate to authors; they may, like Mr. Payne, adopt whole scenes from their predecessors; we certainly have a right to a little more honesty and explicitness in their acknowledgments: and while we agree with him, that no assistance can be available without an effort almost if not altogether as laborious as original composition,' we would yet observe that the labour of adaptation is different in kind from that of composition, and entitled to a different degree of praise. One of the predecessors to whom Mr. Payne is under great and unacknowledged obligations, Nathaniel Lee, in the dedication of his Brutus, speaks thus: "There are some subjects that require but half the strength of a great poet but when Greece or old Rome come in play, the nature, wit, and vigour of foremost Shakspeare, the judgment and force of Johnson, with all his borrowed mastery from the ancients, will scarce suffice for so terrible a grapple." That there is a difficulty in rendering interesting to an English audience subjects taken from the Greek or Roman history, the experience of all our dramatists who have attempted them, sufficiently demonstrates-"even Shakspeare's Brutus," says Lee, "with much ado beat himself into the heads of a blockish age,' "and Jonson's Catiline met no better fate." It is not, however, we conceive, in any excessive loftiness of the subjects, or peculiar 'blockishness' of the audience that this difficulty consists; for after all, the loftiness of a subject in reference to the reader or spectator depends mainly on the author who treats it. Shakspeare is certainly not less raised above his audience in Macbeth or Hamlet, than in Coriolanus, or Julius Cæsar, and they who have been delighted with the two former, may be well supposed, so far as intelligence is concerned, to be capable of receiving pleasure from the two latter. The truth seems to be, that the subjects which have been most commonly selected from classic history have in themselves two defects, which render them impracticable in almost any hands for the English stage; they are too familiar to us in all their details as historical facts, and they are chiefly of a political nature. The interest of the drama must in the main be personal, though it may borrow indirect aid from the national feelings of the audience; it is unfortunate, therefore, that the Roman history has been more resorted to for subjects, than the far more romantic annals of Greece: for of all histories, the Roman is that in which

personal character and individual interest are the most swallowed up by what is public and political.

The judgment of Shakspeare, in this respect, is altogether astonishing-of his three great Roman plays, two, Coriolanus and Mark Antony, are rare instances of direct violation or forgetfulness of that national spirit which we have been describing; the interest in them is almost wholly personal; and, in the third, (Julius Cæsar) he has dexterously contrived to rivet our attention rather on the qualities, the friendships, the quarrels, and the misfortunes of individuals, than on the public cause for which they are contending. In his English historic plays this is still more remarkable; he has indeed appealed to our feelings as Englishmen, in the wars of France and England, but when the scene is laid at home, he makes the interest entirely personal; it is not on public revolutions, a discontented people, or rival factions, that he suffers us to dwell, these are lost in such characters as the tragic and moralizing Richard, the impetuous Hotspur, the chivalrous Harry, shaking off his profligate companions, the ambitious and diabolical Gloucester, the stern and sublime Wolsey.

It is not easy to say how Shakspeare would have obviated the difficulties of Brutus, if he had chosen such a subject; for in spite of the opinion of Voltaire, who calls it "the subject, perhaps, of all others, the most fitted for the English stage," it certainly seems to us objectionable in an eminent degree, and for many reasons. The fall of Tarquin, and the conspiracy to restore him, are events which, whether true or not, we know familiarly as historic factsany alteration or addition is a palpable contradiction of our received faith; at the same time the facts themselves are too meagre and too strictly political to suffice for the interest of a regular tragedy. Accordingly, the naked history has been departed from, more or less, by all who have written on the subject.-Love has been universally one grand ingredient for filling up what Voltaire calls 'le vide de la tragédie,' and he has professedly made it 'le nœud nécessaire de la pièce.' Lee has introduced a 'Teraminta,' natural daughter of Tarquin, and Mr. Payne has his Tarquinia. This alone makes a material change in the character of the conspiracy; but Mr. Payne has wandered still farther from the history; he has given Tarquin a faithful army, and strong camp at Ardea, sunk all mention of his intriguing ambassadors, bestowed on Brutus but a single son, and though he has made that son perish for an attempt to fly with Tarquinia to her father, yet we are by no means assured from any thing that appears in the play, that there was any regular conspiracy for the restoration of the monarch; or if there was, that the unhappy Titus was ever acquainted with it. This last refinement is a striking proof of deficiency of judgment: it was necessary that Titus should be an object of interest,