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feudal lord is the most harrowing in all these novels (rich as they are in the materials of nature and passion) and the description of the old woman, who had been a principal subordinate instrument in the tragedy, is done with a more masterly and withering hand than any other. Her death-like appearance, her strange existence, like one hovering between this world and the next, or like a speaking corpse; her fixed attitude, her complete forgetfulness of every thing but the one subject that loads her thoughts, her preternatural self-possession on that, her prophetic and awful denunciations, her clay-cold and shrivelled body, consumed and kept alive by a wasting fire within,—are all given with a subtlety, a truth, a boldness and originality of conception, that were never, perhaps, surpassed.

ADAPTATIONS OF SCOTT'S NOVELS, IVANHOE, ETC.* WE have two new dramas taken from the romance of Ivanhoe, the one called Ivanhoe at Covent Garden, and the other under the title of the Hebrew at Drury Lane. It argues little for the force or redundance of our original talents for tragic composition, when our authors of that description are periodical pensioners on the bounty of the Scottish press; and

* 1820.

when, with all the craving which the public and the Managers feel for novelty in this respect, they can only procure it at second-hand by vamping up with new scenery, decorations, and dresses, what has been already rendered at once sacred and familiar to us in the closet. Mr. Walter Scott no sooner conjures up the Muse of old romance, and brings us acquainted with her in ancient hall, cavern, or mossy dell, than Messrs. Harris and Elliston, with all their tribe, instantly set their tailors to work to take the pattern of the dresses, their artists to paint the wildwood scenery or some proud dungeon-keep, their musicians to compose the fragments of bewildered ditties, and their penmen to connect the author's scattered narrative and broken dialogue into a sort of theatrical join-hand. The thing is not ill-got up in general; it fills the coffers of the theatre for a time; gratifies public curiosity till another new novel appears; and probably flatters the illustrious prose-writer, who must be fastidious indeed, if, at the end of each representation, he exclaims with Hamlet, "I had as lief the town-crier had spoken my lines!"-It has been observed by an excellent judge, that it was next to impossible to spoil a picture of Titian's by copying it. Even the most indifferent wood-cut, a few scratches in an etching, gave something of a superior look of refinement, an

air of

the outline was so true, and grandeur; grace the disposition of light and shade so masterly in the original, that it could not be quite done away. So it is with these theatrical adaptations: the spirit of the real author shines through them in spite of many obstacles; and about a twentieth part of his genius appears in them, which is enough. His canvas is cut down, to be sure; his characters thinned out, the limbs and extremities of his plot are lopped away (cruel necessity!), and it is like showing a brick for a house. But then what is left is so-fine! The author's Muse is "instinct with fire" in every part, and the disjecta membra poetæ, like the polypus when hacked and hewed asunder, piece together again, or sprout out into new life. The other plays that we have seen taken from this stock are merely selections and transpositions of the borrowed materials the Hebrew (we mean the principal character itself) is the only excrescence from it; and though fantastic and somewhat feeble, compared with the solid trunk from which it grew, it is still no unworthy ornament to it, like the withered and variegated moss upon the knotted oak.-Of Ivanhoe itself, we wish to say a single word, before we proceed to either drama. It is the first attempt of Mr. Scott (we wish the writer would either declare himself, or give himself a nom de guerre, that we might

speak of him without either a periphrasis or impertinence)-it is, we say, Mr. Scott's first attempt on English ground, and it is, we think, only a comparative, but comparatively with himself, a decided failure. There are some few scenes in it, and one or two extraneous characters, equal to what he has before written; but we think they are, in comparison, few; and by being so distinctly detached as they are from the general groundwork (so that no two persons taking the work to dramatise would not pitch upon the same incidents and individuals to bring forward on the stage), show that the other parts of the story are without proportionable prominence and interest. In the other novels it was not So. The variety, the continued interest, the crowded groups, the ever-changing features, distracted attention, and perplexed the choice: the difficulty was not what to select, but what to reject. All was new, and all was equally, or nearly equally, good-teeming with life and throbbing with interest. But here no one, if called upon for a preference, can miss pointing out Friar Tuck in his cell, and the Jew and his daughter Rebecca. These remain, and stand out after the perusal, as above water mark, when the rest are washed away and forgotten. For want of the same pulse, the same veins of nature circling throughout, the body of the work is cold and co

lourless. The author does not feel himself at home; and tries to make up for cordial sympathy and bold action, by the minute details of his subject-by finishing his Saxon draperies, or furbishing up the armour of his Normans, with equal care and indifference so that we seem turning over a book of antiquarian prints, instead of the pages of an admired novel-writer. In fact, we conceive, as a point of speculative criticism, that the genius of the author of Waverley, however lofty, and however extensive, still has certain discernible limits; that it is strictly national; that it is traditional; that it relies on actual manners and external badges of character ; that it insists on costume and dialect; and is one of individual character and situation, rather than of general nature. This was some time doubtful: but the present work "gives evidence of it." Compare his Rob Roy with Robin Hood. What rich Highland. blood flows through the veins of the one; colours his hair, freckles his skin, bounds in his step, swells in his heart, kindles in his eye: what poor waterish puddle creeps through the soul of Locksley; and what a lazy, listless figure he makes in his coat of Lincoln green, like a figure to let, in the novel of Ivanhoe! Mr. Scott slights and slurs our archer good. His imagination mounts with Rob Roy, among his native wilds and cliffs, like an eagle to its lordly nest :

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