Vain is the pleasure, a false calm the peace, His gracious help, or give what we abuse." But nothing in this volume better deserves attention than "Lines suggested by a Portrait from the pencil of F. Stone," and "Stanzas on the Power of Sound." The first for a refinement and justness of thought rarely surpassed, and the second for a lyric flow, a swelling inspiration, and a width of range, which Wordsworth has never equalled, except in the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," and the noble ode, or rather hymn, to Duty. It should be read entire, and I shall not quote a line. By a singular naiveté the poet has prefixed to these stanzas a table of contents. This distrust of his reader seems to prove that he had risen above his usual level. What more to the purpose can we say about Wordsworth, except-read him. Like his beloved Nature, to be known he must be loved. His thoughts may be transfused, but never adequately interpreted. Verily, "To paint his being to a grovelling mind, Were like describing pictures to the blind. But no one, in whose bosom there yet lives a spark of nature or feeling, need despair of some time sympathizing with him; since one of the most brilliantly factitious writers of the day, one I should have singled out as seven-fold shielded against his gentle influence, has paid him so feeling a tribute: "How must thy lone and lofty soul have gone But stills not, neither angers; from his height And far man's wrath, or scorn, or heed above, Smiles down the calm disdain of his majestic love!" [From Stanzas addressed by Bulwer to Wordsworth.] Read him, then, in your leisure hours, and when you walk into the summer fields you shall find the sky more blue, the flowers more fair, the birds more musical, your minds more awake, and your hearts more tender, for having held communion with him. I have not troubled myself to point out the occasional affectations of Southey, the frequent obscurity of Coleridge, or the diffuseness of Wordsworth. I should fear to be treated like the critic mentioned in the story Addison quotes from Boccalini, whom Apollo rewarded for his labours by presenting him with a bushel of chaff from which all the wheat had been winnowed. For myself I think that where there is such beauty and strength, we can afford to be silent about slight defects; and that we refine our tastes more effectually by venerating the grand and lovely, than by detecting the little and mean. THE MODERN DRAMA.* A TRAGEDY in five acts!--what student of poetry,-(for, admire, O Posterity, the strange fact, these days of book-craft produce not only inspired singers, and enchanted listeners, but students of poetry,)—what student in this strange sort, I say, has not felt his eye rivetted to this title, as it were written in letters of fire? has not heard it whispered in his secret breast ?—In this form alone canst thou express thy thought in the liveliness of life, this success alone should satisfy thy ambition! Were all these ardours caught from a genuine fire, such as, in favouring eras, led the master geniuses by their successive efforts to perfect this form, till it afforded the greatest advantages in the smallest space, we should be glad to warm and cheer us at a very small blaze. But it is not so. The drama, at least the English drama of our day, shows a reflected light, not a spreading fire. It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant. This is not an observation to which there are no exceptions, some we shall proceed to specify, but those who have, with any care, watched this ambition in their own minds, or analyzed its * The Patrician's Daughter, a tragedy, in five acts, by J. Westland Marston : London: C. Mitchel, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, 1841. Athelwold, a tragedy in five acts, by W. Smith, Esq.; William Blackwood and Sons. London and Edinburgh, 1842. Strafford, a tragedy, by John Sterling. London; Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1843. results in the works of others, cannot but feel that the drama is not a growth native to this age, and that the numerous grafts produce little fruit, worthy the toil they cost. "Tis indeed, hard to believe that the drama, once invented, should cease to be a habitual and healthy expression of the mind. It satisfies so fully the wants both of sense and soul, supplying both deep and light excitements, simple, comprehensive, and various, adapted either to great national and religious subjects, or to the private woes of any human breast. The space and the time occupied, the vehicle of expression, fit it equally for the entertainment of an evening, or the closet theme of meditative years. Edipus, Macbeth, Wallenstein, chain us for the hour, lead us through the age. Who would not covet this mirror, which, like that of the old wizards, not only reflects, but reproduces the whole range of forms, this key, which unlocks the realms of speculation at the hour when the lights are boldest and the shadows most suggestive, this goblet, whose single sparkling draught is locked from common air by walls of glittering ice? An artful wild, where nature finds no bound to her fertility, while art steadily draws to a whole its linked chain. Were it in man's power by choosing the best, to attain the best in any particular kind, we would not blame the young poet, if he always chose the drama. suc But by the same law of faery which ordains that wishes shall be granted unavailingly to the wisher, no form of art will ceed with him to whom it is the object of deliberate choice. It must grow from his nature in a certain position, as it first did from the general mind in a certain position, and be no garment taken from the shining store to be worn at a banquet, but a real body gradually woven and assimilated from the earth and sky which environed the poet in his youthful years. He may learn from the old Greek or Hindoo, but he must speak in his mother-tongue. It was a melancholy praise bestowed on the German Iphigenia, that it was an echo of the Greek mind. O give us something rather than Greece more Grecian, so new, so universal, so indi, vidual ! An "After Muse," an appendix period must come to every kind of greatness. It is the criticism of the grandchild upon the inheritance bequeathed by his ancestors. It writes madrigals and sonnets, it makes Brutus wigs, and covers old chairs with damask patch-work, yet happy those who have no affection towards such virtue and entertain their friends with a pipe cut from their own grove, rather than display an ivory lute handed down from the old time, whose sweetness we want the skill to draw forth. The drama cannot die out: it is too naturally born of certain periods of national development. It is a stream that will sink in one place, only to rise to light in another. As it has appeared successively in Hindostan, Greece, (Rome we cannot count,) England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, so has it yet to appear in New Holland, New Zealand, and among ourselves, when we too shall be made new by a sunrise of our own, when our population shall have settled into a homogeneous, national life, and we have attained vigour to walk in our own way, make our own world, and leave off copying Europe. At present our attempts are, for the most part, feebler than those of the British "After Muse," for our play-wrights are not from youth so fancy-fed by the crumbs that fall from the tables of the lords of literature, and having no relish for the berries of our own woods, the roots of our own fields, they are meagre, and their works bodiless; yet, as they are pupils of the British school, their works need not be classed apart, and I shall mention one or two of the most note-worthy by-and by. |