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some one who recited his acts and adventures. The recitation was, in process of time, converted into dialogue; the hymn was retained in the shape of chorus.

Whether, however, conveyed in recitation or in dialogue, the subject was the same; the personages of every tragedy, were demigods and heroes. Now, in the first place, the characters of these were ready drawn to the hands of the poet; they would, therefore, never come before him in that vivid portraiture which the creatures of his own brain would assume; never haunt, and press upon his imagination, like known and visible objects, like things familiar, and of which he had rather to record the feelings and the sentiments than to invent them. The poet, then, was writing after the idea of another, was filling up another's outline; and what wonder if this was done somewhat tamely?

'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'

In the second place, The reader or the spectator was as well acquainted with these same ever present personages,-with Neoptolemus, and Ulysses, and Medea, and Electra, and Orestes, -as the poet; and all that was necessary to be done, was not to violate the character, and to adapt the sentiments in general to the preconceived idea.

Thirdly. These high and mighty personages were too dignified to be trifled with if they wept, or raved, or declaimed, every thing must be done with dignity. Compare Orestes and Hamlet, both under the same circumstances,-preternaturally commissioned to avenge the murder of a father, on the paramour of a mother. Every thing in Orestes is abstract; he is a son, any son, avenging a father. Every thing in Hamlet is individual; even when employed in such a task, you see more, you think more, of his character, than of his commission. But who does not see that his melancholy jokes, his bitter irony, his snatches' of old merry songs, that had no mirth in them,' would have been highly indecorous in Orestes ?

The acts of the demigods and heroes, were 'domestica facta,' to the Greeks, were sanctified to them by long and habitual reverence*, had been the tales and marvels of their childhood, and therefore, it was no wonder that they should take possession of their stage. That they should have almost entirely engrossed the French drama, does, we think, cast a tacit reproach upon the originality of the French tragedians: but, adopting the subjects of the Greek drama, they could not, we are of opinion, do otherwise than adopt its style. It is a well-known fact, that

* We do not forget Aristophanes; but we may enjoy a professed jest, without losing our veneration for the object of it; we have all laughed at parodies of Shakspeare, but who ever thinks of them, when reading the original?

VOL. V. N.S.

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not a single tragedy, derived from the Greek mythology, keeps possession of our stage, or is read in our closet.

The reasons which we have assigned above for the style which the Greeks adopted in their drama, will, we think justify a poet for using the same style in scriptural subjects. The characters are too well known to all, and too sanctified in our imaginations, to admit of any addition, or any thing that is not perfectly dignified and solemn. Accordingly, we have always considered Athaliah as the first production of the French drama, no doubt because we could there tolerate the French manner. While we have yawned, (we fairly confess it,) in the midst of all the elegance and well-wrought woes of Phédre and Andromaque, we have never risen from the perusal of Athaliah, but with feelings of the most sublime solemnity.

We are not sorry, therefore, to see Athaliah in an English dress; and we are, on the whole, not discontented with the dress in which the translator has chosen to present her to the public. We could have wished, indeed, that it had been a little more in the costume of our older dramatists, a little more in that flowing and peculiar style which we should find it difficult to describe, but no one, we are fully persuaded, who has competently admired Shakspeare and Massinger, will feel perfectly content with a tragedy in any style but our own, or will ever think any style our own, but that of our good old school. This style consists partly in the language, and partly in the flow of the verse, but is perfectly indescribable in both.

In this style, which, we think, is by no means unattainable in the present day, we have often wished for two or three volumes containing specimens of plays, not of parts of plays, from the Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and German writers. Would not this, it may be said, be transgressing against a rule we have so often laid down, that every translater should be as much as possible in the style of the original? We ask, in answer, whether the style of Massinger and Shakspeare be the same? whether Jonson's be like either? Whether, again, Beaumont and Fletcher did not adopt one entirely distinct from all three? What we recommend is, merely a kind of dialect of the English language, and a particular form of the English verse; to which, we think, a person who should make the above objection would be to the full as pedantical, as he who should translate a Greek play in Iambic alexandrines, with a proper mixture of acatalectic anapæstic dimeters, with their bases and proceleusmatic verses. This is as much the appropriate style of the English drama, as rhyming alexandrines are of the French. We should wish to see Shakspeare himself in rhyme, when translated into French; certainly not for our own gratification, but because we are well aware that the French could enjoy him in no other than a national dress.

We shall leave our readers to form their own estimate of one or two passages of the English Athaliah.

ABNER.

But where that bright futurity foreshewn
To David, and to David's greater son?
Alas, we trusted that a line of Kings

Belov'd and glorious, should from him descend,
Till one, blest hope of mortals, stretching far
The rod of conquest, and the wand of peace,
Should calm the tumults of distracted earth,
While all her kneeling Monarchs own'd his sway.

JOAB.

And why renounce the hope which Heaven ensures ?

ABNER.

Ah! whence shall David's promis'd offspring rise?
Can Heaven itself a living branch bestow,
-The royal stock uprooted,-wither'd,-dead?
E'en cradled infancy partook the grasp

Of Athaliah's vengeance. Shall we call

Her victims from their eight years sleep of death?
Oh! had her keen-eyed fury miss'd its aim,
Were one rich drop of royal blood unspill'd-

JOAB.

What would my Abner then?

ABNER.

Oh joyous day!
With what devotion would I hail my King!
With what loud loyalty the gathering tribes-
But hence, vain dream!' pp. 6, 7.

Whate'er I did,

I deem'd expedient, Abner; nor will stoop
To vindicate my acts of sovereignty
At the base bidding of the clamorous herd.
Let it suffice them, that the powers above
Have been the patrons of a martial reign,
Prospering my arms, till the far sever'd shores
Of this broad continent, respect their strength.
Jerusalem hath peace. No vagrant horde
Of Arabs, nor the vaunting Philistine,

Whose inroads mock'd your Kings, now waste the vale
Of Jordan. Syria courts a brother's name.

E'en Jehu, swift destroyer of my house,

Shrinks in his covert of Samarian hills.

To quell that murderer's force, my envoys rous d

A near and potent foe, whose legions press

On all his frontier; while these realms enjoy,

In proud repose, the fruits of policy.

These are my triumphs; but their noon-day brightness,
Of late malignant clouds and mists obscure.

A dream-shall Athaliah prate of dreams!
Ay-but those untold horrors haunt my soul,
And ye must give it rest.--Thus was the dream :
From thick unnatural midnight seem'd to start
My royal mother, bright with rich attire

As on her death-day; suffering had not chang'd
Her bold imperial aspect, and the tints

With which she cancell'd the reproach of years
Were fresh upon her cheek These hollow sounds
Crept through mine ear: "Tremble, thou other self!
"O'er thee too, Judah's wrathful God prevails.
"I mourn thy fate."- And then the stately shade
Lent o'er my couch.' pp. 24, 25.

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Art. XIII. Private Hours of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his Earliest Years to the period of his Marriage with the Arch-Duchess Maria Louisa. Written by Himself, during his residence in the Isle of Elba. 2 Vols. 12mo. Price 10s. 6d. No English Publisher's

name.

THIS

HIS is a publication, which so outrages both decency and common sense, and which carries on its face so obvious an air of imposition, that nothing but an insatiate appetite for slander could, we should imagine, reconcile any one to its perusal We should entertain no hope as to the moral character of the person who has endeavoured, without sufficient ability to support the deception, to impose these coarse and puerile effusions upon the public as the production of Napoleon Bonaparte; were it not that in withholding his name from this despicable performance, he gives some indication of a sense of shame. The soi-disant Editor pretends that a Duke, whose name we are left to guess, brought him the manuscript, with an injunction to print it!

It is perfectly unnecessary to attempt to prove that this is not the performance of Napoleon Bonaparte. The ignorance of the Author, with respect both to the character it professes to delineate, and to the human character in general, appears in every page. Napoleon is made not only to accuse himself of crimes at nine years of age, which not the laxest morality would hold venial in manhood, but to argue coolly in their

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