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commissioner, unless he would assist my memory, and set down his proposals in writing; being vexed and ashamed that I could hardly say a word in his Grace's name which I was not obliged to contradict the day following. However, if my veracity was suspected, it was soon cleared; for when he explained himself by letter or memorial, there was still the same inconsistency."

While affairs were in this situation, Fox received the royal commands to form a plan of administration. The plan adopted was such as left it in the power of the Duke of Newcastle to become the head of it, and yet, did not make his co-operation indispensable. It failed in consequence of the refusal of the individuals of whom it was to consist to accept their respective offices.

In the mean time the impatience of the King to get rid of his present servants increased every day; and before any scheme of a new administration was settled, Earl Temple received the royal intimation that his services were no longer necessary. It was expected that on this occasion, Pitt would have immediately resigned; but instead of saving his opponents any trouble, he was more assiduous than usual in his attendance at court, so that it was necessary to send him too a formal dismission. Busy negociations to fill up the vacant posts now commenced: but few were willing to engage in the management of public affairs at a time of some danger and great discontent, under an aged monarch whose favour was sure to excite the distrust of him, who, according to the usual course of nature, was within a few years to fill the throne. After disappointment in other quarters, recourse was again had to the Duke of Newcastle. His Grace negotiated with Pitt and his adherents. Finding them too high in their demands, he at last formed a ministry from which they were excluded. When all seemed concluded, a letter from Lord Chesterfield, written at the suggestion of Leicester House, brought back his former doubts: he again negotiated with Pitt, and came to a final agreement with him: the King, however, would not give his consent to the terms of it, and the result was that Newcastle, in violation of his express promise, declined any concern in the adminstration.

The King was now in greater difficulties than ever; and he formally declared his wish, which he had before hinted, that Lord Waldegrave himself should be at the head of the administration which was to be formed. His Lordship refused earnestly and long, but was at last obliged to yield to his master's urgent solicitations. Lords Granville and Winchelsea, the Dukes of Bedford and Devonshire, and Mr. Fox, were to be his principal associates. Many negotiations followed and various plans were arranged, the particulars of which are minutely described in these

Memoirs. Ultimately the whole scheme failed. Fox would not enter firmly and heartily into it; and the ground of his backwardness was partly the King's want of cordiality towards him, and, still more, the little encouragement he received from those on whose assistance he depended in the House of Com-mons, and the little probability there was of commanding a majority there sufficient for the management of public business. The Duke of Newcastle, too, was very active in preventing the multitude, who from long habit had come to look upon him as their political leader, from engaging in the new ministry. The King was therefore forced, though with infinite reluctance, to abandon his plan, and to surrender at discretion to Newcastle and Pitt. Lord Mansfield first, and afterwards Lord Hardwicke, conducted the negotiations between these hostile, though now co-operating statesmen. Their sentiments were ill adapted for political association. The Duke hated the orator, and the orator despised the Duke; but the one was deficient in political courage, and the other in parliamentary strength, and both coveted power. Accordingly after much dissension a treaty was concluded between them, and that administration was formed which has so often been the theme of extravagant adulation. We take leave of Lord Waldegrave with his account of the presentation of the new ministers at court.

"On the day they were all to kiss hands, I went to Kensington, to entertain myself with the innocent, or, perhaps, ill-natured amusement of examining the different countenances.

"The behaviour of Pitt and his party was decent and sensible; they had neither the insolence of men who had gained a victory, nor were they awkward and disconcerted, like those who come to a place where they know they are not welcome.

"But as to the Duke of Newcastle, and his friends the resigners, there was a mixture of fear and of shame in their countenances: they were real objects of compassion." (P. 138.)

We have seen what were the real causes that led to the establishment of Pitt and his associates in ministerial power. They are not of a very dignified order: the irresolution and timidity of some, the treachery of others, the interestedness of many, and especially their unwillingness to exclude themselves from the benign rays of the rising sun, by serving faithfully an aged monarch. Let us however turn to the page of vulgar history, and we shall find the scene wonderfully changed. There, forsooth, we behold Pitt soaring into office on the wings of genius and virtue, borne up by the breath of disinterested patriotism, and of enthusiastic popular favour.

"The whole nation," says Smollett, "seemed to rise up as one man in the vindication of the fame of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Legge: every mouth

was opened in their praise. The whole kingdom caught fire at the late changes; nor could the power, the cunning, and the artifice of a faction long support it against the united voice of Great Britain which soon pierced the ears of the sovereign. It was not possible to persuade the people, that salutary measures could be suggested or pursued except by the few, whose zeal for the honour of their country and steady adherence to an upright disinterested conduct, had secured their confidence and claimed their veneration. A great number of addresses, dutifully and loyally expressed, solicited the King, ever ready to meet half way the wishes of his faithful people, to restore Mr. Pitt and Mr. Legge to their former employments. Accordingly his Majesty was graciously pleased to redeliver the seals to Mr. Pitt, &c. &c." (Smollett, b. iii. c. vii. s. 3.)

Surely it is not necessary to say, which of the two writers is the more worthy of credit; he who recorded what he himself knew, and affairs in which he himself had been an agent, or he who wrote upon the faith of popular rumour and prejudice. Many other examples might be quoted, in which the vague or incorrect ideas, derived from books in general vogue, will be corrected by the perusal of these Memoirs.

We are aware that Lord Waldegrave's work is not fitted to allure the taste of the desultory reader. It presents few anecdotes that can be related with effect in a social circle. It is occupied with plans rather than adventures. It will, however, be perused with satisfaction and advantage by those who study history, not as an accumulation of facts to be remembered, but as the means of leading the mind to reflect on the diversified combinations of human affairs. One very gratifying lesson we learn from it-that, comparing the present time with the past, national concerns are now guided much more according to general views, and are much less subject to the caprice and cabals of individuals than they seem to have been between sixty and seventy years ago.

The letters of Mr. Henry Fox, in the Appendix, are interesting for the information they contain, as well as for the traits of individual character which they exhibit.

ART. XII.-The Cenci, a Tragedy in five acts. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Second Edition, 8vo. pp. 104. C. and J. Ollier, London, 1821.

THE Cenci is the best, because it is by far the most intelligible, of Mr. Shelley's works. It is probably indebted for this advantage to the class of compositions to which it belongs. A tragedy must have a story, and cannot be conducted without men and

women: so that its very nature imposes a check on the vagabond excursions of a writer, who imagines that he can find the perfection of poetry in incoherent dreams or in the ravings of bedlam. In speaking of the Cenci, however, as a tragedy, we must add, that we do so only out of courtesy and in imitation of the example of the author, whose right to call his work by what name he pleases we shall never dispute. It has, in fact, nothing really dramatic about it. It is a series of dialogues in verse; and mere versified dialogue will never make a drama. A drama must, in the course of a few scenes, place before us such a succession of natural incidents, as shall lead gradually to the final catastrophe, and develope the characters and passions of the individuals, for whom our interest or our sympathy is to be awakened: these incidents give occasion to the dialogue, which, in its turn, must help forward the progression of events, lay open to us the souls of the agents, move our feelings by the contemplation of their mental agitations, and sooth us with the charms of poetical beauty. It is from the number and nature of the ends which the poet has to accomplish, as compared with the means which he employs, that the glory and difficulty of the dramatic art arise. If the only object of a writer is to tell a story, or to express a succession of various feelings, the form of dialogue, far from adding to the arduousness of the task, is the easiest that can be adopted. It is a sort of drag net, which enables him to introduce and find a place for every thing that his wildest reveries suggest to him.

The fable of the Cenci is taken from an incident which occurred at Rome towards the end of the sixteenth century. An aged father committed the most unnatural and horrible of outrages on his daughter; his wife and daughter avenged the crime by procuring the assassination of the perpetrator, and became in their turns the victims of public justice. The incident is still recollected, and often related at Rome. Hence Mr. Shelley infers, "that it is, in fact, a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of man, approbation and success." It is remembered and related, because it is extraordinary-because it is horrible-because it is, in truth, undramatic. A murder, attended with circumstances of peculiar atrocity, is scarcely ever forgotten on the spot where it happened; but it is not for that reason a fit subject for dramatic poetry. The catastrophe of Marrs' family will be long recollected in London; the assassination of Fualdes will not soon be forgotten in Rhodes; yet who would ever dream of bringing either event upon the stage? Incestuous rape, murder, the rack, and the scaffold, are not the proper materials of the tragic Muse: crimes and punishments are not in themselves dramatic, though the conflict of passions which they occasion, and from which they arise, often is so

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The pollution of a daughter by a father-the murder of a father by his wife and daughter, are events too disgusting to be moulded into any form capable even of awakening our interest. Mr. Shelley himself seems to have been aware of this. "The story of the Cenci," says he, " is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous; any thing like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal, and diminish the actual, horror of the events, so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry, which exists in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes, may mitigate the pain of the contemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring." Without presuming to comprehend these observations completely (for we know not what poetry exists in rape and murder, or what pleasure is to be derived from it), we are sure, that whatever may be thought as to the possibility of overcoming by any management the inherent defects of the tale, Mr. Shelley, far from having even palliated its moral and its dramatic improprieties, has rendered the story infinitely more horrible and more disgusting than he found it, and has kept whatever in it is most revolting constantly before our eyes. A dialogue in which Cenci makes an open confession to a Cardinal of a supreme love of every thing bad merely for its own sake, and of living only to commit murder-a banquet given by him to the Roman nobility and dignitaries, to celebrate an event of which he has just received the news, the death of two of his sons and declarations of gratuitous uncaused hatred against all his relations, not excepting that daughter whom he resolves to make the victim of his brutal outrage for no other reason than because his imagination is unable to devise any more horrible crime, fill up the first two acts. Cenci has accomplished the deed of horror before the opening of the third act, in which the resolution to murder him is taken. In the fourth he again comes before us, expressing no passion, no desire, but pure abstract depravity and impiety. The murder follows, with the immediate apprehension of the members of the family by the officers of justice. The last act is occupied with the judicial proceedings at Rome. Cenci is never out of our sight, and, from first to last, he is a mere personification of wickedness and insanity. His bosom is ruffled by no passion; he is made up exclusively of inveterate hatred, directed not against some individuals, but against all mankind, and operating with a strength proportioned to the love which each relation usually excites in other men. There is no mode of expressing depravity in words which Mr. Shelley has not ransacked his imagination to ascribe to this wretch. His depravity is not even that of human nature; for it is depravity without passion, without aim, without temptation: it is depravity seeking gratification, first, in the perpetration of all

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