umphed over the artificial. It has been seen that what beguiles us of our tears, that what arouses our emotions, that what elevates our souls, is not the regularity of numbers, the gracefulness of oratory, or the elaborateness of description. All the art of the practised rhetorician has never been able to produce this effect; but one touch of unadulterated nature-one throe of genuine feeling in the writer, has compelled in a moment the result which the other has so long and so fruitlessly laboured to obtain. The most stately tragedies in which the distress was apportioned by rule, and in which the strictness of propriety and decorum was preserved even in the midst of weeping and woe, never thrilled an audience like the rude outpourings of unmanneredly grief in the plays of Lillo; and even the extravagance of Lee became popular, when it was evident that the man put his soul into his works.

But the purification had long been manifest in the other branches of Literature, ere the Drama exhibited any sign of participation in the reform. The stage still clung to its old formularies; and, indeed, has not yet effectually deserted them. The long reign of declamation-a reign which, however beneficial to the temporary interests of theatres, has been the primary cause of the declension of the drama-ceased only to make way for a more deleterious form of composition, which inherited all the faults, though none of the beauties, of its predecessor. In fact, the stage retrograded, and anything approaching to pure nature was more than ever scouted by actor and manager. And this state of things has continued, with some variations, to the present hour; only one true poet having appeared in the acting Dramatic arena, who has had the hardihood to seek for his characters and sentiments beyond the narrow pale of green-room prejudice. We allude to JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES.

We assert that Mr. Knowles is the only modern acted Dramatist whose plays are natural and life-like. Although the period of his plays is generally laid in the times gone by, yet he chiefly deals with the emotions-the passions-the hopes and the fears which are common to Humanity at all times and at all places. The essential and not the accidental in man is the quarry that Knowles flies at. We at once recognize his characters as beings linked to us by a chain of indissoluble sympathy; as beings whose motives and whose actions can be explained by a reference to the intuitions of our own bosoms. Out of this track Knowles never travels; he creates no stupendous impersonations of godlike energy to which the world could never have given birth; he demands our admiration for no impossible heroism, but contents himself with depicting real men and women; whose prototypes we have all known or may know. He has discovered that the real is as poetical as the ideal.

This kind of Drama was, as we have before hinted, wholly new to the stage when Knowles first appeared. The pseudo-classical school, indeed, never pretended to copy the life around. It was confessedly artificial from beginning to end; and its personages could be recognized as human nowhere out of the walls of the theatre. But to this school Knowles never owned allegiance; the Elizabethan Dramatists were evidently the models which in his earliest productions he emu

lated. His Caius Gracchus is plainly a highly wrought study from Coriolanus; a study, however, so successfully elaborated as to demonstrate that he who made it was himself a master. The difference of the argument of the two plays merely consists in the fact, that Coriolanus is an advocate for the patricians, and Caius Gracchus for the plebeians. The one play, in truth, is a companion to the other. But there is a portion of Caius Gracchus which exclusively belongs to Knowles; a portion in which he could not help being original. It is in the domestic scenes that the genius of the poet breaks out most strongly; for, when once among the affections, Knowles needs no guide-he is in the clime to which he is native. Still more is this exemplified in his Virginius; a tragedy which, although perhaps too theatrically constructed, contains, in many places, evidences of deep feeling and manly thought. It is proper that the poet should begin his career by exercising the highest faculties of his art. He should prove his calling and his election by showing himself invested with the noblest attributes ere he condescends to the inferior branches. He who grovels in the beginning, will be a groveller to the end. The world leaves to every author the erection of the standard by which he is to be judged; accepts his own measure of excellence, and classes him accordingly. Hence did Knowles wisely in recording his early aspirations towards tragedy. His Caius Gracchus and Virginius we value more for the sake of the strength they denoted in the author than their own; a strength which merely time was lacking to confirm. And that time did confirm it, to an excellence even beyond expectation, the production of The Hunchback gloriously testified. This delightful play is nearly without a fault; for the shadow of one that the lynx-eyed critic might find in it is wholly mechanical, and does not at all affect its intrinsic beauty. The play is vital throughout. Every syllable is necessary to propel the current of the dramatic interest; no word is thrown away. Master Walter is a delineation of which an author has a right to be proud; the impatience of one conscious of mental nobility at the contempt which was, or might be, generated by bodily deformity, and the suspicious fretfulness which, though it could not hide the soul of goodness in the man, or extinguish his potent yet wayward affection for an only child, laid him still more open to the taunt he dreaded, are so delicately developed in this portraiture, as to entitle it to rank among those treasures that are garnered in the storehouse of the memory to be the pride and instruction of future hours. Were aught necessary to substantiate Knowles's claim to be classed among the first of British dramatists, the fine scene in the fourth act of the play before us, between Julia and Clifford, would be amply sufficient for the purpose. Self-knowledge is the fruit of suffering; can only be obtained by an endurance of the throes and convulsions of a heart anguished almost to breaking. Julia, at the commencement of the play, is discovered in a situation that had allowed her no scope for the display of character; and hence, when occasion does minister opportunity, her ignorance of herself betrays her into a position that seems to be fraught with irremediable misery. But the process is a healthy one, and the misery medicinal; the fine gold emerges from the furnace purified of dross; and at length the reckless child of im

pulse knows her peace by finding out its bane. Her trial proves her indeed,

The parental relation is perceptibly that which Knowles most delights to portray; and, in sooth, it is the noblest that can furnish argument to the poet. Ever divine, in violation it becomes awful; from whence arises the more than supernatural grandeur of the character of Lear. All other authority has its origin in this sacred sentiment; a sentiment, the denial of which is an abrogation of the sovereignty of God. For the piety and obedience which a son offers to his father differs not, except in degree, from that he should present to his Deity; and the filial emotion once smothered, no hope remains that any other flower of righteousness can find soil to spring. When the affection that should bind father and child has proved mortal, all others must die; and this love, which is the type of that greater love which bears rule over the universe, made wroth, he who has profaned its majesty wanders thenceforth a God-abandoned and blighted mockery, despoiled of all that can lend dignity to manhood. But all rights and duties are reciprocal; and if an unfilial child be a monster, an unnatural father is a still greater one. He abuses an authority vouchsafed for the holiest and wisest of ends; and fights the battles of Hell with weapons entrusted to him from the armoury of Heaven.

Knowles, however, depicts not the parental relation thus violently riven asunder; but rather exhibits it flourishing in full perfection, and only suffering wrong from the antagonism of the world without— an antagonism which ever elevates what it fails to destroy. From Virginius even to John di Procida, most of Knowles's plays have been based upon some of the multitudinous manifestations of the filial or paternal principle; though it is in the Wrecker's Daughter that the sentiment is allowed the fullest developement. This play, more than any other, confirms what Charles Lamb asserted of our author, that he thrills our bosoms nearly without the aid of language. Knowles's language has always been of the simplest texture, and in the Wrecker's Daughter is altogether destitute of ornament. Yet is it not a whit less effective on that account; for real emotion is never dressed in a magnificent mantle of words. Knowles expresses the intensity of passion; the Dramatists of the last age contented themselves with merely describing it. They depended more upon what their personages said, than what they did or suffered; but Knowles, very rightly, not infrequently, reverses the rule.*

* Modern tragedy writers never let a hero expire without a last dying speech and confession; but it would appear that Shakspere did not think such a procedure by any means invariably necessary. Macbeth has no dying speech; neither has Coriolanus, nor Richard the Third, nor some of his other heroes ;-an omission which Knowles has imitated (rather timidly) in Caius Gracchus.

Before we dismiss the Wrecker's Daughter, we must notice that Knowles, in one part of his play, has unwittingly fallen into the same track as Sir Walter Scott. There is a similarity between Marian and Jeannie Deans, which, although evolved by wholly different circumstances, is worthy of some consideration as indicating a psychological analysis. We refer to what in both might appear to the worldly moralist an intellectual defect—as a kind of ignorant simplemindedness. The world requires a system of current ethics for daily use, in order to obtain which, it alloys the pure gold of conscience with the brass of convenience; and as whoever falls below this generally received standard of conduct is pronounced a criminal, so whoever rises above it is esteemed a fool. If the world permits or excuses a certain action, it is astonished that other considerations should deter you from doing what is so manifestly to your advantage; it smiles at your stupidity, or misinterprets your motives. Thus few, in reading The Heart of Midlothian, have been enabled to suppress an inclination to pity the simplicity of a girl who could endure the most dreadful toils and privations to procure a sister's pardon, and yet shrink from a slight equivocation, which, by preventing the condemnation, had rendered that pardon unnecessary;-an equivocation, too, which was expected by all, and which all were ready to forgive. Viewed in the light of the popular idea of rectitude and prudence, this procedure seems very unaccountable; the desertion of the easy and certain expedient, for one beset by such incalculable difficulties as to render success apparently impossible, is, in the eyes of the world, strange and monstrous. So again with Marian: her inability to suppress her knowledge of a fact which fixed a murder on her father; and her subsequent self-devotion to prevent that which, at the beginning, she might have prevented at so much less cost, belongs to the same class of anomalies. To those around it is a contradiction; they wonder,

and ask

"Was't not strange she fainted

Soon as her evidence was done, and yet
Could give that evidence?"

Yet who will deny that it is this folly which gives their peculiar charm to the portraitures of Scott and Knowles? And wherefore this charm, since we do not usually delight in foolishness? We have said that the world adulterates the gold of conscience, and declares that adulteration unavoidable; but adulterated gold will not satisfy the demands of the scrupulous. Neither Jeannie Deans nor Marian had bartered their pure metal for the debased currency of the world; or yet learned to distinguish the expedient from the right. Thrown into circumstances which seemingly opposed conscience to affection, they asserted the supremacy of the former, not by weakening the forces of the latter, but by permitting no lengthened contest. Feeling that it was equally wrong to violate either, they preserved their allegiance to both, although at a fearful sacrifice. Now, this daring to recognize a higher rule of conduct than the one to which the world would have all conform, is heroism; and however much the prudential conventions of society may call upon us to condemn, a still more potent voice within us compels us to admire. Hence the mixture of pity and pleasure when

we behold the exhibition of such imprudent purity; pity that it should be the subject of the bitterest of the whips and scorns of time, and pleasure to perceive that all humanity is not yet totally immersed in the mire of secular morals.

Although, as we have above declared, the idea of the parental relation affords the noblest arguments that a poet can choose; yet some quondam critics have thought fit to censure Knowles's partiality for it as a mannerism and defect. We envy not the discernment or the hearts of such objectors. Is it not as inexhaustible a source of incident as sexual love, lacking which prescription has decided a play imperfect? And wherefore should not one be introduced as frequently as the other? If investigated, it will be found that the parental relation is mixed up in all the joys and miseries of life. Nor should its sanctity be considered as an objection to its indiscriminate representation, for nought but the holiest impulses of our nature should be exhibited on the stage.

Never should we forget that stage representations are either the most sacred or the most profane of things; and that, indeed, they can only be justified by the genius of the poet; since genius, however exerted, can only work to good and pure ends. The antics of the actor are a blasphemous mimicry, when not directed to any other or higher purpose than provoking the plaudits of a crowd. He becomes answerable for a double sin-for debasing his own nature and that of his auditors; and the theatre, under such auspices, whatever may be the ostensible character of its exhibitions, must be considered as a temple, originally erected to favour the promotion of the highest virtues and noblest aspirations, but at length desecrated, through the treachery of its ministers, to the uses of sensualism and impiety. But such desecration must ever take place while it is dependent on the populace for support. While the stage, instead of being the stern reprover, is compelled to pander to the lusts and appetites of the many, Jack Sheppardism will be its code of morals; thieves and prostitutes its patterns of humanity; hurdles will be its triumphant cars; and its test of heroism, the gallows. It will only set forth as worthy of emulation what its patrons are willing to admire; and instead of taking the initiative in their moral advancement, will be ever found in the wake. And even if one or two principal theatres should be enabled to keep themselves aloof from this prevailing vagabondism; if they should refrain from bringing before our eyes the bestiality of crime and the squalor of poverty, without the least palliative to check their demoralizing effects; yet will it be found that the leprosy has but taken a more insidious form. They cover themselves with the proprieties of convention as with a cloak, and thus hide the disgustingly protuberant deformities of their foul disease. The fashionable Drama (if now there be any such) has become more refined, but not a whit more moral, than it was at the time when, in the words of Johnson, "intrigue was plot, and obscenity wit." But granting to its advocates that the Drama of the present day is guiltless of immorality, still must they own that it has no further end in view than furnishing two hours' amusement, or setting on a few dozen of barren spectators to laugh; and how pitiful the poet, how contemptible the actor, who can be contented with such