brazen lungs, and since both his taste and his natural capabilities refused to accompany these Bombastes Furiosos into all the excess of their vulgar vociferation; the richness of his modulation, the intelligence and refinement of his elocution, seem to have been lost sight of. It has been also clamorously objected, that his art was too apparent, that his pompous dignity was so incessant ly maintained as to be obtrusive and disgusting; that he too rigorously observed Hamlet's rule of " acquiring and begetting a temperance in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion," which, if it gave smoothness to the whole, gave also a pitiful tameness; that every gesture was measured with minute precision; that he never ventured to move a step, or even to wave his hand without the most cautious study; that he was far too anxious about the grouping and disposing of the subordinate stagepuppets, so that you forgot the hero in the drill-serjeant, and had the fine illusion of the august Roman too often broken by the intrusion of the schooled and imperative Mr Kemble; that, in short, he never burst away, like Cooke or Kean, from the trammels of methodical precision in the irregular career of tempestuous passion. All these deficiencies and overdoings were very pointedly put in some lines of a poem called the Thespiad. Precise in passion, cautious even in rage, Lo! Kemble comes, the Euclid of the stage; Who moves in given angles, squares a start, And blows his Roman beak by rules of art, Writhes with a grace to agony unknown, These vituperations were in some instances just, but they were often urged in ignorance by minute critics who could not expand their minds to a comprehension of the whole, who could only nibble bit by bit, and count the beats of their stop-watches. That very stoical apathy of manner which offended their fustian taste, was a virtue and a mark of magnanimity in the personation of most of his characters, the tone of which (we except Hamlet and a few others) was of that lofty and severe cast, that they aimed at repelling instead of yielding to the agency of human passions, and stood far aloof from the petty jealousies and agitating moods of meaner minds. Certainly Kemble could not adapt himself to all characters. He had not the tact and versatility of Garrick, and his representation during the course of the same piece was frequently very unequal. Thus, his Hamlet had too much of the "antique Roman" in it to be perfect. He could not soften himself down into that pensive softness with which the exquisite fancy of the poet has invested the young Dane. He bore his inevitable melancholy with too heroic and unbending a fortitude; nor did he display with sufficient delicacy that superficial sportiveness of behaviour which, in the reserved and hear-stricken Hamlet, conceals deep grief and distraction of mind, and makes them more pathetic and more alarming. He had not tact for the accommodating amiableness of the young prince's manners. Always sustained, he seemed not to acquiesce in the author's humour for ease and familiarity, and to feel it somewhat like a derogation from his dignity to smile with the gay and to laugh with the giddy. Perhaps he had not fathomed the delicate metaphysics of the character. But for princely dignity of mien and air, for exalted thoughtfulness and pensive philosophy, who could surpass Mr Kemble? His sarcastic reception of the hireling spies upon his conduct, the bitter taunts with which he upbraids his uncle-father and aunt-mother, were quite exquisite, fitted to blast and wither those on whom they fell. In the earlier scenes of Richard III., where the mind must be distorted and compressed under the mask of dissimulation, he was not happy; but, when Richard throws off entirely the cloak of hypocrisy under which he crept to the throne, and breaks out into all the pride and recklessness of avowed despotism, Kemble could give the direct impression of his energetic character better than any man; nor in his earlier years did he yield to any in the bustling bravery of the fight, or in the fearful hideousness of the catastrophe. The character of Zanga, was more suited to his powers,-a prince degraded into the state of servitude,― born under higher auspices than the petty lord to whom he is condemned to bow in reluctant submission,-tortured by the poignant sense of wrongs can hast slain ! &c. But the character of Macbeth, in which he took farewell of Scotland, was altogether his own. Before the murder of Duncan, he exquisitely mingled his vaulting ambition with the misgivings and the relentings of Nature; and, after the murder, we conceive nothing approaching nearer to the fearful truth than the throbs, and throes, and agonies of soul, which lacerate and rend him, than the inquietude which haunts his footsteps wherever he goes,-than the basilisk-terrors which startle him even in the sunshine, glare upon him from the hell-illumined cavern, or sting him on his lonely pillow. Oh! full of scorpions is my mind.- Whoever has seen the rich combination of the brother's and the sister's genius in the representation of this awful tragedy, has no higher dramatic exhibition to look forward to. Would that Shakespeare could have seen it! We have said that Mr Kemble could not adapt himself equally to every character. Some characters there are, and those now very much in vogue, for the faithful representation of which his very excellencies incapacitated him. Thus it was that his occasional attempts at comedy were as unsuccessful as they were injudicious. His forte lay not in the ready and natural exhibition of every-day life. He failed here, as in scorn of such easy excellence. It was only when he had to embody ideal grandeur, or to breathe forth some high poetical conception or heroic thought, that his whole soul came willingly to the effort. He always aimed at being superhuman ; and so, when ordinary life came to be pourtrayed, there was a want of ease, and freshness, and reality. Even in Penruddock, though the general impression conveyed was most striking, -nay, even tremendously powerful,he failed to relieve its elevation, and to enhance the delicacy of the portrait, by those familiar touches which every unsophisticated taste demanded. Neither, for a similar reason, was he at home in Sir Giles Over-reach. It was in Kemble, indeed, to kindle into his courage, and swell with his manifesting the griping selfishness of ambition; but he had no talents for this piece of hoary-headed avarice, or for developing the shuffling duplicity of the consummate villain, or for exhibiting his disgusting vulgarity. For all these, not only his formed manner, but his very soul, seemned to have an instinctive repugnance. Any thing like meanness of aspect, or coarseness of passion, or degradation of taste, were spurned away by the habitual elevation of his thoughts and his deportment. It was when he ascended the steps of the Capitol to bid a tyrant die,-it was when he stood proudly among the relics of the Roman senate, and urged his fellow-patriots to win freedom's battle, or to fall,-it was when he daringly presented himself among his enemies as the wronged outcast from his country, the vindictive asserter of his rights,-that the full congenial majesty of his character shone gloriously forth. Then, as was fitting, we lost sight of the actor entirely, and beheld-not Mr Kemble, but Brutus, and Cato, and Coriolanus alternately before us, and it was impossible to resist the impression that -the Genius of old Rome Up from the grave had raised his reverend head, Roused by the shout of millions.— We cannot quote the language of the poet throughout the whole evolution of these characters, and, of course, we cannot do justice to Mr Kemble's representation of them; yet we feel pleasure in particularizing a few beau 1 ties that live more prominently in the memory. We shall pass over all the rest, to come to his Coriolanus, which of all his characters is most closely associated with our idea of him, and most intensely reverts upon our admiration. In his person the conceptions of the poet met with their perfect prototype. The very beau-ideal of Roman majesty moved before the audience. There you beheld the unbending soul, whom scarce the endearment of kindred could soften from the utmost sternness of its purpose, glowing with all the generous ardour of patriotism, till hurried by injury into sweeping and impetuous revenge. These were elements which found in Mr Kemble the most congenial energies, and which kindled his heroic countenance and mind into their proudest and most forceful display. When, in the first scene, he comes forth, the haughty patrician among the mutinous plebeian rabble,- -even before a word is uttered, the spectator is arrested to gaze on the noblest form he had ever seen, rearing itself into the most majestic attitude, and quelling with a look of conscious authority the tumult of the crowd, his right arm erected in fearless command, his chest distended with confidence and courage,-his purple robe magnificently depending from his shoulder, as if it shared in the wearer's triumph. Nor is the deep and settled disdain with which he contemplates the multitude assembled before him more in character than that proud exultation in which all the warrior breaks out, when he finds an enemy worthy of his prowess,-when he learns that the Volscians are in arms, with Tullus Aufidius at their head. I'm glad on't. Were half to half the world by the ears, and he Upon my party, I'd revolt, to make Nothing could be more finely conceived than the characteristic fierté which animated his reply, when Brutus attempts to remonstrate with him on his treatment of the people. Brut. Call't not a plot. The people cry you mocked them,-called them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. Cor. Why, this was known before. you, His absolute shall,-shall! "There was a laughing devil in his sneer." In like manner, when one of the tribunes comes to drag him before the people, his fearless and resolute dignity sends the daring, officious fool from his presence, like a sparrow scared away by an eagle. Cor. Hence, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments! Throughout the scene, which ends in the banishment of Coriolanus, Mr Kemble's genius pervaded the whole theatre with his own feelings of haughty disdain. You beheld a mighty mind, unsubdued by indignity, pourdispensers of his fate. ing back confusion upon the pigmy Who, that has ever seen it, will forget his appearance in the Volscian camp, when, in an attitude of most solemn grandeur, and with an expression of eye and countenance that would have mocked even the imitative efforts of Apelles, he stands by the statue of Mars, as if his spirit vied fabled god? It more than justified the with the prowess and the pride of the exclamation of the Volscian officer,— 66 point of poetic excellence, it is intend present themselves before him, and with tears and melting appeals entreated to re-publish that tragedy precisely him to quit the Volscian camp, and in the form in which it exists, in the be again the saviour of his country. only printed copy with which I am The conflict betwixt affection and ven- acquainted. In the meantime, I am geance was sustained as Nature would desirous of adding something to the have sustained it. In the two simple analysis I have already made, in order words, Leave me!" there was a to enable the reader to form a more world of expression, a terrible picture correct estimate of the piece as Ձ of the distraction that was tearing his whole. The extracts I have furnishsoul in twain. The choked utterance ed were unconnected-they could only seemed not to come from the lips, but be judged of in their separate merit, to burst from the quivering cores of and we all know that a play might be the heart. a very bad one as a whole, which contained passages that, taken by themselves, displayed both beauty and pover. It is a point, however, that would not be disputed by such as had read the entire performance, that "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is as excellent and perfect as a whole, (estimating it by certain rules which the writer seems to have laid down for himself, and making a very few allowances for the state of literature of the time,) as the short quotations fur Once more, what a deluge of passion breaks out upon Aufidius in the last scene! It was not sport to call him a Boy of tears. The depth of anger, astonishment, and disdain with which he reiterated the word Boy, carried in it something sublime, and sealed upon the audience an ineffaceable impression of the firmest manliness, the proudest magnanimity. Measureless liar! thou hast made my heart If you have writ your annals true, 'tis nished in my last are vigorous, cha there, That, like an eagle in a dove-cot, I ON THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC WRIT- No. V. In my last article, which brought the English drama down to the year 1587, I gave several disjointed quotations from the tragedy of the Misfortunes of Arthur,' by Tho mas Hughes. I was well convinced at the time, that the striking character of those passages would attract considerable attention to that almost unknown, and I may say without qualification, admirable production, written by a person hitherto a non-entity in our literary history, and partially prepared by unquestionably the greatest man of an age in which great men abounded. Every body knows in how many different shapes Gorboduc has appeared within the last thirty or forty years-how often it has been reprinted, extracted, criticised, and dissected, as forming of itself an era in our drama; and I now learn, that in consequence of what has been so recently said of the "Misfortunes of Arthur," a work infinitely superior in racteristic, and poetical. But for this fact, which I consider undeniable, İ should not have laid so much stress upon the piece, but hitherto Sackville's heavy prosing tragedy has not only been loaded with more praise than is due to it, but has absorbed much of the applause merited by productions nearly contemporary. The Misfortunes of Arthur" being unknown to them, we cannot blame Warton and others for not paying tribute to it. As a favourable opportunity is now afforded, I will extract a part of a scene between Mordred the usurper and Conan, an honest counsellor, which will give the reader something of an idea of the spirited mode in which the dialogue is generally conducted: it is from Act ii. scene 2, after Mordred has sustained his first defeat. Conan. O spare, t'weare saffer to be lou'de. Mordred. As safe But he that needlesse yeldes vnto his bane, When he may shunne, doth well deserve to loose The good he cannot vse: who would sustaine A baser life, that may maintaine the best? Cona. How much were you to be renowmed more, If casting off these ruinous attempts, You woulde take care how to supplie the losse Which former warres, and forraigne broyles have wrought; How to deserue the people's heartes with Instead of the words "commons grudge," the words "realme enuies" have been substituted, by sealing a small slip over the original: this has been done in many places throughout the play; sometimes probably to avoid offensive political allusions, and sometimes to gratify the author, who seems to have altered his mind in several substitutions. A few of these slips are only fastened at one end, so as to give the reader an opportunity of deciding for himself. + Instead of the foregoing four lines, the following have been annexed on a separate slip. "The first art in a kingdome is to scorne The enuie of the realme: he cannot rule That feares to be enuide. What can di vorce Enuie from soueraigntie? Must my deserts ?" VOL. V. No. 'Tis my happe that Brytain serues my tourne; That feare of me doth make the subiects crouch; That what they grudge they do constrayned yeeld. If their assents be slowe my wrath is swift, Whom fauour failes to bende, let furie breake! If they be yet to learne, let terrour teach What kings may doe, what subiects ought to beare. Then is a kingdome at a wished staye, When whatsoeuer the soueraigne wills or nilles, Men be compelde as well to praise as beare, And subiects willes inforc'd against their willes. Cona. But who so scekes true praise and Cona. Those some be rare. Cona. But hap is last, and rules Mord. So hope is first, and hoists the saile. Cona. Yet feare; the first and last dos sielde agree. Mord. Nay, dare; the first and last haue many meanes. But cease at length; your speach molests me much : My minde is fixt! give Mordred leave to doe What Conan neither can allow nor like. In this scene many minor faults could undoubtedly be pointed out |