awaken the utmost enthusiasm of patriotic pride, was heightened by the force of dramatic effect, and all the allurements of poetical beauty. At the very time of the exhibition of "The Persians" at Athens, the vanquished invader was crouching, with proposals of a treaty, to the power whose supremacy he was compelled to acknowledge; and nothing could more effectually tend to induce the Athenian people to accept these terms of reconciliation, than the display of haughty obstinacy, and its fatal consequences, in the character and calamities of the Persian king. Such circumstances as these, were undoubtedly great auxiliaries to the success of the ancient tragedies; but the opinion of posterity, more solid than the mere excitation of popular feeling, has determined that the veneration of the Athenians for their dramatic poets was no less a proof of their taste than of their patriotism.

The practice, however, of consulting in so great a degree the opinions of the audience, cannot altogether be admired. It seems very inconsistent with the dignity of those great poets, as candidates not merely for the approbation of their own, but of succeeding, ages. Yet it may be urged in their defence, that the stamp of immediate sanction was undoubtedly more favourable to their interest than the expectation of future fame; and they probably were aware, that although a great portion of their tragedies was adapted only to the taste of the audience in their own age, there were, nevertheless, those redeeming flashes of genius, the admiration of which depended upon no considerations of contemporary occurrence, or of national prejudice.

From this very brief examination of the Greek stage, we should be inclined to pronounce, that although simplicity is their distinguishing excellence, the ancients,

even in the refinements of the drama, had made extra

ordinary progress.

That, amid this galaxy of splendid beauties, there should be in the ancient drama many and glaring blemishes, is not surprising. Tediousness of narration, the repetition of certain trite apothegms, a peculiar quaintness and occasional obscurity of style, especially in the dialogue, are among the most apparent imperfections of Greek tragedy. The developement of the plot in the prologue, which we occasionally find, is a decided solecism in the conduct of the drama; and the introduction of the chorus, however highly we may prize the beautiful effusions of poetry to which it gives rise, is justly censurable, as tending to interrupt the harmony and connection which should subsist between every part of a dramatic plot.

It is singular that Rome, generally the successful rival of Athens in her literary glories, should have left no specimen of excellence in tragedy. The plays of Seneca are, for the most part, vapid and bombastic; and in some instances, professedly an imitation, and that by no means good, of the Greek tragedies.

The French tragedy forms a connecting link between the simplicity of the Greek, and the variety of the English, stage; but, allowing for all prejudices, classical and national, we must still be allowed to pronounce it inferior to both. It has none of the grand and majestic features of the Greek, nor the versatile and natural character of English, tragedy. It has monotony without dignity, heaviness without simplicity, and elevation without sublimity of style. We are far from denying that the tragedies of the best French authors contain many, beauties of poetry, and sometimes great interest of plot. But the sublime, one of the leading qualifica

tions of tragedy, they rarely reach; and in those passages where the thought is in itself magnificent, the very complexion of the French language renders the author unable to embody his conception in appropriate powers of expression. They are always most sublime when the idea is briefly conveyed, as in the famous line of Racine;

Je crains Dieu, cher Abner-et n'ai point d'autre crainte. The question of French dramatic verse has been discussed so much at length in our late Numbers, that we will here only repeat our conviction that the restraint of rhyme is unconquerably adverse to the success of French tragedy. It impedes the fluency of expression, and increases tenfold that difficulty which so often mars a powerful thought, the clothing it in equally powerful language. It is a very acute observation of Aristotle, that the jingle of rhyme-the anticipation of a particular sound at particular intervals-tends materially to distract the attention of the reader or hearer from the subject of the composition on which he has to decide. And if this be true of metrical writing in general, it is still more strongly applicable to the drama. Surely, if it be necessary, in any one species of composition more than another, to rivet the attention closely and powerfully to the subject rather than to the sound, it is in this. The power and success of those tragedies in our own language, which have been written in prose (a part of the subject to which we shall return anon), strikingly display the very secondary importance of metrical correctness. The effect even of pathetic writing is greatly impaired by the French Alexandrine, but with sublimity it is absolutely irreconcilable. We think, therefore, those French tragedies the best, which turn upon interesting, rather than upon sublime, subjects;

and when we read the Zaïre and Alzire of Voltaire, we almost forget the monotonous jingle of the verse, in the gracefulness and beauty of the composition.

Of M. Jouy's tragedy of Sylla, ample notice has been taken in a former Number. We trust it is the dawn of a new era in French tragedy. It displays an eloquence and a vigour in the language beyond what we had believed the French Alexandrine capable of receiving; and we have only to regret that with powers so eminently calculated to burst the fetters of prejudice, this distinguished writer should still adhere so strongly to the artificial and constrained style of the French stage.

We have already had occasion to observe, that the character of the drama is in a great measure influenced by national taste and peculiarities. We believe the Greek tragedy to have been admirably calculated for the taste of an Athenian audience,-and we think the drama of our own country, as established since the age of Elizabeth, the very best that ever prevailed in any nation wherein theatrical exhibitions have been sanctioned,— inasmuch as it adheres more closely to nature, and rejects more than any other the trammels of art. Nevertheless, an English play would have been ill adapted to an Athenian audience;—and the variety of incident to which we have been accustomed, renders us utterly incapable of bearing their simplicity of plot, and uniformity of scene, on our own stage. Therefore is it, that we never could bring ourselves to admire Cato; a play which, in our opinion, has owed much of its celebrity to the name of its author, and still more to the political temper of the time in which it was written; but very little to its poetical, and nothing to its dramatic, merit. Cato is, in fact, if we except the soliloquy, and one or two passages less tame than the rest, a cold, vapid, and

monotonous composition. Moreover, although the author has, with a view to simplicity, modelled his drama on the French plan, he has grossly violated the unity of action, by the introduction of a subordinate and insignificant plot. The strict observance of the unity of place has been fatal to every thing like stage-effect, and although specially intended to preserve the illusion of the drama, has, in fact, destroyed it, by prohibiting even the change of scene necessary for the different business of the play*. But, say the advocates of Cato, it is a play written for the closet, and not for the stage. Be it so; we merely contend that its claim to a dramatic character should be abandoned; though, even as a poem, we are inclined to think that its merit is extremely questionable.

We have touched briefly on the character of Addison as a dramatic poet, because we conceive him to form a single exception among all our distinguished tragic writers of strict adherence to the Greek and French stage. He was followed, indeed, by many others; but their plays, interesting no political or literary party in their success, are now scarcely known even by name. The elder Colman, in his prologue to the revival of Philaster, in 1763, thus aptly characterizes the whole race :Next, prim, and trim, and delicate, and chaste,

A hash from Greece and France, came modern Taste;
Cold are her sons, and so afraid of dealing

In rant and fustian, they ne'er rise to feeling.

With Addison, then, we dismiss the subject of simplicity of construction in the drama, and turn to the leading

* We do not mean, by these observations, to lay any stress upon "the unities," the observance of which, beyond a certain point, in spite of the perverse opinion of that noble poet, whose genius, above all others, spurns the fetters of art, has been of late abandoned by general consent. But it is curious to observe how the author of Cato, by his own want of judgment, could mar those very rules which he professes to support.