selves, for the most part, unsuccessful dramatists,) who | By casting his ideas into a by-gone mould, by returnextolled him for his very faults, instead of directing ing to what might be considered the infancy of Art in attention to his beauties, thereby exciting a very this country, (despite the one glorious exception who natural prejudice against him. The style of this transcended all ages,) he has compelled us to enterpoem was conversational, and "would-be" natural, to tain some doubts of his originality of genius. Neversuch an extent as to be supremely unnatural, and theless, he was and is our most successful acting almost unintelligible. And here be it observed, that dramatist since Shakspeare, and will always maintain a tendency to the same bold simplicity is even yet an honourable position in our country's literature. visible at times in Browning's artistic creations. (We speak, of course, only with reference to the "Paracelsus," a very fine dramatic poem, came next, effusions of the tragic muse, and would not detract which, with beauties of the highest order, had also its from the fame of the clever but not over-moral Conmeasure of deficiencies, being somewhat vague and greve, Farquhar, Sheridan, &c.) Other living dramashadowy, and, consequently, unacceptable to the tists, it may be added, have surpassed those that went general reader. Then came the "Bells and Pome- before them. Sergeant Talfourd has given us a clasgranates," to which we propose at present to direct sical creation in "Ion," and his "Glencoe" has much attention,-a series of plays, and dramatic utterances merit. Bulwer also, though subject to the charge of in the shape of lyrics, published by Moxon, in shilling conventionalism, has exhibited real dramatic power, numbers; and these "Bells and Pomegranates," as a and may yet accomplish far higher things in this whole, are masterly, and stamp their author as one of sphere, than he has till now attempted. Leigh Hunt the most singular poets of his age and country. By has given us a sweet drama in his "Legend of the bye, we must not altogether omit to notice our Florence." author's "Strafford," a very remarkable tragedy, produced by Mr. Macready, who performed the principal character, and repeated it many nights with great effect. We do not wish to dwell on this play; its political and historical sympathies being diametrically opposed to our own, but, as a work of art, it has great merit.

We have no great respect for the so-called unacted drama. Mr. Stephens's plays, though indicative of talent, are obviously the fruits of a diseased imagination, mainly corrupted by Elizabethan studies, which scorns the trammels of common sense, and absolutely delights in heaping together the most incongruous epithets and far-fetched and unnatural similes. R. H. Horne appears to us a painstaking, laborious student-nothing more. Mr. Heraud's dramas are certainly not dramatic, whatever their other merits may be: witness the extraordinary "Roman Brother." One more writer of dramatic poems must be referred to, already mentioned, whom it is, or perhaps rather has been, the fashion to regard as a poet of lofty genius: the author of "Philip von Artevelde." We will only say, for the present, that we are utterly unable to discover this gentleman's merits, whether as dramatist or poet, (though we believe him to be a sensible and noble-hearted man,) inasmuch as he appears to us to be devoid of impulse or of dramatic vitality, and, further, addicted to many conventional errors.

It is not, however, in technical adaptability for performance, but intensity of passion and truthfulness of characterisation, combined with high dramatic interest, that Robert Browning's plays surpass the productions of the English school. We do not imply so much of laudation, in saying this, as might at first sight appear. Of course, the matchless Shakspeare pertains to no school, and is beyond all parallel; but Beaumont and Fletcher, despite their brilliant gifts of imagination, are unartistically vulgar and painfully immoral-nay, base; and Massinger is harsh and crude; and the lawless Ford, and the colourless Shirley, and the "minor Elizabethans" generally, do appear to us to be little better than talented barbarians, sadly deficient in nobility of thought, and therefore wearisome, and for the more part even repulsive. The masques of rare Ben Jonson are "beautiful exceedingly," but his tragedies and comedies are intolerably laborious, and void of dramatic vitality. The barbarism of THE Dryden is yet more disagreeable, he having added the false refinements of a "pinchbeck" age to a substratum of native coarseness. "All for Love," indeed, has merit, but is wholly devoid of originality. We cannot bestow more admiration on the tediously immoral Rowes and Otways in whom our fathers delighted, and whom we have left behind us, it is to be hoped, for ever.

Superior to all these dramatists of the past is the living Sheridan Knowles, who has feeling, fancy, and dramatic impulse, but is, alas! deficient in the highest qualities of conception, and executes in a borrowed strain, closely reflecting all the conventionalisms, the "i'fecks" and the "quothas," of the Elizabethan school.

(To be concluded in our next.)

DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL PEPYS, F.R.S.1 THE historians, the philosophers, the poets of ancient Rome, afford us but a faint insight into the great human heart pulsating in their age. The heroes and magnates are placed before us, we are introduced to their feasts, informed of their pursuits, and shown how they felt and acted; but the people were long lost to us: we looked in vain for any faithful and distinct records of their habits and customs, domestic economy and social relations. Every one was required to colour and fill up, according to his own peculiar

(1) "The Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S. with a Life and Notes, by Richard Lord Braybrooke." Third Vol. Third Edition. Colburn: London, 1848.

is quite in accordance with that pronounced in the present day.

The character of Charles II. and the nation under his rule, has been greatly misrepresented, especially in the alluring pages of "Woodstock." Most people conclude that there then existed nothing but a scene of unmitigated and wide-spread dissipation; and that the sense of virtue, and almost of decency, had fled the land: but Pepys corroborates the views of those inclined to take a juster and more philosophic estimate of human nature. He represents the king as sick in body, oppressed with ennui, and "weary of everything;" instead of the free, jovial, thoughtless

notions, the vague outline left us. All was indistinct -until some labourers digging, one day, struck their spades into the midst of two buried cities. After a sleep of many centuries, Herculaneum and Pompeii had a resurrection, and saw once more the light of day shining on them: loud voices and busy footsteps again resounded in their streets. The veil which had divided us from a long-lost generation was rent asunder, and we learnt how men really worked and thought, felt, hoped, and feared in the olden time. Yes! there was the skeleton, engaged at the moment of death in a debauch, the handle of the amphora still grasped in its bony fingers-there was the miser, who had lingered to save his gold at the cost of his life-man he is generally believed to have been. Such is and the belle, with a shattered mirror by her side. All the little articles of ornament and use were returned to sight the tailor's implements, the carpenter's tools, the jeweller's gewgaws-in a tavern remained its drinking cups and wine vessels, some broken in the last moment of jollity—and, in a chemist's shop, some half-made pills, inter alia, the “medicine man," whilst engaged in preparing for another the means of battling with death, saw the grim foe advancing on himself, and fled at his approach, leaving his work undone, his patient uncared for. We beheld the men of Hercula-instated in his first position: it is scarcely to be neum and Pompeii engaged in the very last acts of their lives, and with the imprints of their individual minds exposed before us.

the inevitable result of certain causes upon one naturally of good intentions and kindly disposition, but wanting in energy and moral firmness; ungrounded, during youth, in right principles, and destitute of any great command over his subjects, condemned, in fact, to tolerate much which he did not approve of. Brought up in the midst of luxury and splendour; then, unexpectedly, deprived of even the necessaries of life-enduring evils and privations of the severest kind, and afterwards suddenly re

wondered at that he should have plunged, for awhile, in his restoration, into pleasure of every kind, with an appetite for it rendered keener by previous abstinence; and though there is too much to condemn in his conduct and career, still there are some extenuating matters which Pepys's Diary relates.

"Men's evil manners live in brass-their virtues

We write in water."

The Diary of Pepys is like the discovery of another Herculaneum : it reveals to us much that had been lost, and makes plain more that had been imperfectly understood, or mistaken. How few are there who do not derive their knowledge of our history from Shakspeare and Scott, rather than from the pages of Therefore we bear in mind the excesses of BuckingHume, Smollett, Lingard, or Macaulay? And why? ham, Rochester, and others of the same stamp, and Because the latter exhibit little more than a fleshless accept them as types of a genus, instead of isolated skeleton-plain, dry facts-only the most prominent and exceptional specimens. They seem, on the conpoints of which fix themselves in the memory; whilst trary, to have been regarded then, much as we regard the former conjure up the people of old, living and our "fast men" now. Indeed, one nobleman was acting in our presence, and not mere objects of vague furiously attacked by the House of Commons for a conjecture or curious inquiry. And yet, our immortal matter which in this day would be left to the excludramatist and novelist induce us to receive, as facts, sive cognisance of the courts of law. And hear much which is the product of their imaginations, Pepys's opinion about bull-baiting! "It is a rude and tinged, in too many instances, with prejudice. The nasty pleasure; we had a great many hectors in the exhilarating and tempting draught which we eagerly same box with us, and one (very fine) went into the pit, and unreflectingly imbibe from their hands, is often and played his dog for a wager, which was thought calculated to impair the judgment and mislead the strange sport for a gentleman." We fear that the fancy. A writer like Pepys is, therefore, most valuable present age has somewhat relaxed in its estimation of as a corrective to it: his relations can be almost similar " pleasures." Such also was the puritanical implicitly depended on; and he, too, presents them in spirit then existing, that "it was feared, that setting a form which compels perusal and remembrance. He up of plays would undo the nation:" and the autobiomust have been a kindred spirit with Boswell-each graphist, having slily ventured into a theatre, sayswas a well-disposed, gossiping, vain man-cach has "I sat with my cloak about my face, in mighty pain, been rescued from the slough of oblivion by clinging lest I should be seen by any one." On the whole, to the skirts of men who could not be submerged in the Diary induces us to remind our contemporaries, it-and each attests the veracity of his narrative by when inclined to indulge in unmitigated vituperation most amusing, because involuntary, self-exposure. of their ancestors in the latter half of the 17th cenBoth were men of far quicker apprehension, and tury, and to vaunt their own superior morality, to possessed of far more common sense and sound judg-weigh the facts on each side justly and carefully. ment than superficial observers would give them credit The volume before us is principally occupied by mefor. This is particularly true of Pepys; whose verdict moranda of the Great Plague and the Fire of London. on his contemporaries, and their manners and customs, ] (To be continued.)