vent his writing a tragedy. Yet we have above made the dissipation and rarefaction of this spirit in society, the bar to dramatic excellence. Egotism is of different sorts; and he would not compliment the literary and artificial state of manners so much, as to suppose it quite free from this principle. But it is not allied at present to imagination or passion. It is sordid, servile, inert, a compound of dulness, vanity, and interest. That which is the source of dramatic excellence is like a mountain spring, full of life and impetuosity, sparkling with light, thundering down precipices, winding along narrow defiles; or

Like a wild overflow, that sweeps before him
A golden stack, and with it shakes down bridges,
Cracks the strong hearts of pines, whose cable roots
Held out a thousand storms, a thousand thunders,

And so, made mightier, takes whole villages
Upon his back, and, in that heat of pride,
Charges strong towns, towers, castles, palaces,
And lays them desolate.

The other sort is a stagnant, gilded puddle. Mr. Wordsworth has measured it from side to side. "'Tis three feet long and two feet wide."-Lord Byron's patrician haughtiness and monastic seclusion are, we think, no less hostile than the levelling spirit of Mr. Wordsworth's Muse to the endless gradations, variety, and complicated ideas or mixed

modes of this sort of composition. Yet we have read Manfred.

But what shall we say of Mr. Coleridge, who is the author not only of a successful but a meritorious tragedy? We may say of him what he has said of Mr. Maturin, that he is of the transcendental German school. He is a florid poet, and an ingenious metaphysician, who mistakes scholastic speculations for the intricate windings of the passions, and assigns possible reasons instead of actual motives for the excesses of his characters. He gives us studied special pleadings for involuntary bursts of feeling, and the needless strain of tinkling sentiments for the point-blank language of nature. His Remorse is a spurious tragedy. Take the following passage, and then ask, whether the charge of sophistry and paradox, and dangerous morality, to startle the audience, in lieu of more legitimate methods of exciting their sympathy, which he brings against the author of Bertram, may not be retorted on his own head? Ordonio is made to defend the project of murdering his brother by such arguments as the following:

What? if one reptile sting another reptile,

Where is the crime? The goodly face of nature
Hath one disfeaturing stain the less upon it.

Are we not all predestined Transiency,

And cold Dishonour? Grant it, that this hand

Had given a morsel to the hungry worms

Somewhat too early-where's the crime of this?
That this must needs bring on the idiotcy

Of moist-eyed Penitence-'tis like a dream!
Say, I had lay'd a body in the sun!

Well! in a month there swarm forth from the corse

A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings
In place of that one man. Say, I had killed him!
Yet who shall tell me that each one and all
Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy
As that one life, which, being push'd aside,
Made room for these unnumber'd!

This is a way in which no one ever justified a murder to his own mind. No one will suspect Mr. Southey of writing a tragedy, nor Mr. Moore either. His Muse is light. Walter Scott excels in the grotesque and the romantic. He gives us that which has been preserved of ancient manners and customs, and barbarous times and characters, and which strikes and staggers the mind the more, by the contrast it affords to the present artificial and effeminate state of society. But we do not know that he could write a tragedy; what he has engrafted of his own in this way upon the actual stock and floating materials of history is, we think, inferior to the general texture of his work. See, for instance, the conclusion of the Black Dwarf, where the situation of the parties is as dramatic as possible, and the effect is none at all. It is not a sound inference, that, because parts of a novel are

dramatic, the author could write a play. The novelist is dramatic only where he can, and where he pleases; the other must be so. The first is a ride and tye business, like a gentleman leading his horse, or walking by the side of a gig down a hill.

ON PLAY-GOING AND ON SOME OF

OUR OLD ACTORS.

THERE is less pedantry and affectation (though not less party-feeling and personal prejudice) in judging of the stage than of most other subjects; and we feel a sort of theoretical as well as instinctive predilection for the faces of play-going people, as among the most sociable, gossipping, good-natured, and humane members of society. In this point of view, as well as in others, the stage is a test and school of humanity. We do not much like any persons who do not like plays; and for this reason, that we imagine they cannot much like themselves or any one else. The really humane man (except in cases of unaccountable prejudices, which we do not think the most likely means to increase or preserve the natural amiableness of his disposition) is prone to the study of humanity. Omnes boni et liberales HUMANITATI semper favemus. He likes to see it brought home from the universality of precepts and general terms to the reality of persons, of tones, and actions; and to have it raised from the grossness