we find lofty fentiments, fplendid imagery, eloquent expreffion, found morality, every thing but the language of human paffion and human character. In the hands of Corneille, and ftill more in thofe of Racine, much of the abfurdity of the original model was cleared away, and much that was valuable fubftituted in its' ftead; but the plan being fundamentally wrong, the high talents of these authors, unfortunately, only tended to reconcile their countrymen to a ftyle of writing, which muft otherwife have fallen into contempt. Such as it was, it rofe into high favour at the court of Louis XIV. and was by Charles introduced upon the English ftage."

Comedy, on the contrary, divefted by the depraved taste of the monarch and the age, of every pretenfion to decency, was not, in its plot, formed upon the Parifian model.

"The English audience had not patience for the regular comedy of their neighbours, depending upon delicate turns of expreffion, and nicer delineation of character. The Spanish comedy, with its bustle, machinery, difguife, and complicated intrigue, was much more agreeable to their tafte. This preference did not arife entirely from what the French term the phlegm of our nati onal character, which cannot be affected but by powerful ftimulants. It is indeed certain, that an Englishman expects his eye, as well as his ear, to be diverted by theatrical exhibition; but the thirst of novelty was another and feparate reafon, which affected the style of the revived drama. The number of new plays reprefented every feafon was incredible; and the authors were compelled to have recourfe to that mode of compofition which was moft eafily executed. Laboured accuracy of expreffion, and fine traits of charactery, joined to an arrangement of action, which fhould be at once pleafing, interesting, and probable, requires fedulous ftudy, deep reflection, and long and repeated correction and revifion. But these were not to be expected from a play-wright, by whom three dramas were to be produced in one feafon; and in their place were fubftituted adventures, rencountres, miftakes, difguifes, and efcapes, all eafily accomplifhed by the intervention of fliding pannels, closets, veils, mafques, large cloaks and dark lanthorns. The favourite comedies, therefore, after the Reftoration, were fuch as depended rather upon the intricacy, than the probability of the plot; rather upon the vivacity and livelinefs, than on the natural expreffion of the dialogue; and, finally, rather upon extravagant and gro tefque conception of character, than upon its being pointedly delineated, and accurately fupported through the reprefentation."

Such, Mr. Scott obferves, was the ftate of the English drama when Dryden became a candidate for theatrical laurels, and while we follow him through his detail of the theatrical pieces produced by his author, it is not intended re

gularly

gularly to notice the merits and defects of every one, but to offer fome occafional obfervations, fuch as either the play or the Editor's comment on it may feem to require.

Dryden produced twenty-eight plays; the period in which he wrote for the ftage, from the Wild Gallant, which a appeared in February 1662-3, to Love Triumphant, which was acted in 1691, was thir y-two years. If this number of plays were diftributed according to an average, it would not appear that Dryden poffeffed any extraordinary copiousness of fancy or facility of compofition, but when it is recol lected that in many of thofe years his attention was altogether withdraws from the ftage, and it is remembered that during fome portion of the period he was compelled by a contract, ftated by himself in the prologue to the Mock Aftrologer, to write three new plays in a year, he will not be deprived of the celebrity which a great critic has bestowed on the extraordinary endowments which could fo well accomplish fuch a task.

Dramatic compofition appears, by Dryden's own confef. fion, and by the obfervation of all his biographers, not to have been an employment for which he confidered his mind to be well conftructed; and yet in the courfe of his dramatic effays, he has perhaps difplayed all the refources of his mind, fhowing how readily he could turn his great powers to any given fubject; with what audacity he could invent, with what fervour he could depict, with what fubtlety he could reafon, and with what felicity he could imitate. Still, they who look with attention to Dryden's more happy efforts, will not only afcertain the fact, but will perceive the reafons why his genius did not fuccefsfully apply itfelf to the formation of dramas. The true art of the fcene, that touching exhibition of human nature, which affects the heart and subdues the understanding, confifts in thofe exquifite disclosures of the latent caules of action and paffion, which he who can manage dialogue and incident in all their purity and precifion, knows how to draw forth by flight and cafual, as well as by ftrenuous and premeditated acts and expreflions; but in Dryden, no character is drawn out by that which is oppofed to or in co-operation with it, but every one unfolds and difplays itfelf. Every incident has evidently been contrived on purpofe to produce the very obfervation which follows upon it, and every ftroke of the witty or the fublime is easily to be traced to fomething fo exactly premeditated in the mind of the poet, that the perfon in the play feems to have been created on purpofe to be clothed with the very characteristics with which the author has been pleased to in

veft him. Under fuch circumftances, the delight which fhould flow from fcenic reprefentation is almoft altogether fuppreffed, or, at the utmolt, it is limited to that which fine language, poetic images, and unexpected illuftrations can. beflow, and far removed from the higher fenfations which are created by paffion artfully excited, and humour judiciously difplayed.

The Wild Gallant, with which Dryden unfuccefsfully commenced his dramatic career, deferves notice only as a fpecimen of the diffolute manners which then prevailed, and of the bad tafte which is the conftant attendant on depraved manners. This play, which was acted at court by command of the King, and protected by the beautiful Countess of Callemain, afterward Dutchefs of Cleveland, contains, among many other paffages of filthy groffness, a fcene, in which a juftice of the peace is feen romping with an old procurefs and her bevy; the two virtuous ladies of the play are introduced to dance among them, and the joke of the exhibition is, that the proflitutes, at parting, give their feveral addreffes in lanes and places, the very names of which the ear of modelly must abhor to hear repeated.

Such was Dryden's entrance into the fields of the drama at the age of thirty-two; and to thofe who duly confider this play, the evident borrowing of the little character it contains, the unfuccefsful attempts at wit and pleafantry, and the want of judgment in conducting the plot, it will appear' furprising that the fame poet thould at any time afterward. attain the celebrity he did, and fhould in fo many modes and flyles of dramatic compofition fhow fo much ability and genius. If he never attained to the greatest heights in this art, it was evidently not for want of all the materials which education and fancy can furnish, but for want of that animating and directing impulfe which enables a man, where the capacity of his mind is rightly confulted, to effect in their greateft extent all the objects he has in view.

The Rival Ladies, properly termed by Mr. Scott a drama of intrigue borrowed from the Spanish, is defective in its Atructure, deftitute of intereft, and remarkable chiefly as it contains Dryden's firft effay in rhyming dramatic poetry, a fpecies of compofition in which he afterward attained unrivalled excellence.

The Indian Queen was next produced, in conjunction with Sir Robert Howard; it is a play in rhyme: the fhare to be claimed by each co-adjutor is uncertain, but its fuccefs was ample, To this Mr. Scott fays, "Doubtlef

1

"Doubtlefs the fcenery and dreffes contributed not a little. Moreover, it prefented battles and facrifices on the ftage, aërial demons finging in the air, and the god of dreams afcending through a trap; the leaft of which has often faved a worse tragedy."

In connexion with this play was Dryden's next production, the Indian Emperor, but the affinity of the perfonages in one drama could not, in the author's apprehension, be made evident to the audience, without the aid of a clumsy device, that of diftributing printed papers, in order, as it was afterward expreffed in the Rehearfal, "to infinuate the plot into the boxes." The vigour of poetry and force of imagination difplayed in this piece were fafficient, notwithftanding its many faults, to make its author a confpicuous mark for envy; and accordingly he was foon attacked by a contemporary fatirift, who, defcribing a dinner party of noify coxcombs, introduces the mention of Dryden's play with thefe lines:

"Mine hoft, who hardly fpoke a word an hour,

Now rofe, and prais'd the Indian Emperour."

After the appearance of this play, the author was engaged in a literary controverfy on the propriety of writing dramatic pieces in rhyme, and that too, with his friend, patron, and fellow labourer, Sir Robert Howard, whofe fifter, Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, he married in 1665. This marriage was unhappy, and Mr. Scott lofes his obfervations on it with fome admirable remarks, which a poet alone could make, in defcribing the feelings of a poet under fuch a misfortune.

"It is difficult," he fays, "for a woman of a violent temper and weak intellects, and fuch the lady feems to have been, to endure the apparent[ly] caufelefs fluctuation of fpirits incident to one doomed to labour inceffantly, in the feverish exercise of the ima gination. Unintentional neglect, and the inevitable relaxation, or rather finking of fpirit, which follows violent mental exertion, are easily mifconftrued into capricious rudeness, or inten tional offence; and life is embittered by mutual accufation, not the lefs intolerable because reciprocally juft. The wife of one who is to gain his livelihood by poetry, or by any labour (if any there be) equally exhaufting, muft either have tafte enough to relifh her husband's performances, or good nature fufficient to pardon his infirmities. It was Dryden's misfortune, that Lady Elizabeth had neither the one nor the other; and I difmifs the difagrecable fubject by obferving, that on no one occafion, when

a farcafm

a farcafm against matrimony could be introduced, has our author failed to feafon it with fuch bitterness as fpoke an inward confcioufnefs of domeftic mifery."

In an introduction to the Rival Ladies, Dryden had maintained the fuperiority of plays in heroic measure over those in blank verfe, and when the fire in 1666, by deftroying the play-houfe, put a stop to dramatic reprefentations, he had leifure, after publishing his celebrated poem of Annus Mirabilis, to produce his "Effay on Dramatic Poetry," a vigorous and judicious work, which being in the form of a dialogue, Sir Robert Howard, in the character of one of the fpeakers, was made to urge, without fuccefs, the fentiments he was known to entertain on the preference of blank, verse to profe. Sir Robert vindicated his own opinions in an angry preface to the Duke of Lerma, and as he treated. Dryden with confiderable difdain, the poet, when he publifhed a fecond edition of the Indian Emperor in 1678, prefixed to it a " Defence of his Effay," which comprifed an attack on his opponent, fo vigorous and fevere as, for a conGiderable period, to occafion animofity between them.

As plays in rhyme will probably never again be written, and as even thofe of Dryden are not likely to be revived, the controverfy is now divefted of much of its intereft; but the cenfure of this mode of writing ought furely not to be fo extenfive as to include a denial of the tafte or good sense of thofe who could adopt it. The mode of dramatic recitation, in Dryden's time, does not appear to have been reduced to that standard of fimplicity and nature, to which the good fenfe and taste of Garrick brought it in the last century, and therefore the ears of the audience were not fo much hurt as they would be in thefe days by the recital of fpeeches in rhyme. Precedent was not decidedly against it, as even Shakspeare, in many of his plays, has indulged largely in that way of writing, and particularly in Romeo and Juliet, befides occafional burfts in many of his tragedies, and long fcenes in fome of his comedies. Dryden, who had more than any man a complete command of all the resources which rhyme could give, was obliged late in life, to allow that fuch a form of writing did not admit of the difplay of nature or paflion; but for defcription, narration, and argu ment, it poffeffes many great advantages. No man perhaps. can feriously wish to fee on the theatre an entire play, even of Dryden's, in rhyme; but he must have carried his objections to an extraordinary pitch of faftidioufnefs who can perufe without fenfations of the highest pleasure, many of

the