with which we have always remembered the spasmodic twitch of his elbow, the self-complacency about his eyes and jaws, the lofty look of conscious power, the stamping of the foot, and the inexhaustible energy of bowing which marked his “Devil on Two Sticks," all such graces and qualifications being, as from Dullandry it now appears, the original property of the devil of the Brockenberg. However, to return to our narrative; which, as I am prepared to show, has in these days of daring speculation, the inestimable charm of truth to recommend it to the severest attentions of my readers. Little George remained a marvel to the good citizens of Hildesheim, few of whom, for certain prudential reasons, would any longer permit their children to play with him; fearing, and reasonably enough, some evil from contact with a child who was evidently a favourite with the spirits of the Hartz Mountains. However, this resolution had no effect on George, who more than ever indulged in solitary rambles, becoming day by day more serious and taciturn. His little head-as Professor Teufelskopf, sagaciously observed--was filled with the shapes and shadows haunting the Brockenberg! Many were the solicitations made by Teufelskopf and rival professors to Hans Wieland, to be permitted to take little George and educate him for a philosopher, an alchemist, in fact for anything and everything, the boy displaying capacities as all declared only to be found in an infant Faust. To all these prayers Hans Wieland was deaf, resolved to bring up his son to the honest and useful employment of doll-making, keeping, if possible, his head free from the cobwebs and dust of the schools, and making him a worthy minister to the simple and innocent enjoyments of baby girls,* rather than consenting to his elevation as a puzzler and riddler among men. Thus, our hero denied to the scholastic yearnings of the great Teufelskopf, sat at home, articulating the joints of dolls and helping to make their eyes open and shut, when-had his father had the true worldly ambition in him—the boy would have been inducted into knowledge that might have given him supernatural power over living flesh and blood, bending and blinding it to his own high, philosophic purposes. Hans Wieland, however, was a simple honest soul, with a great, and therefore, proper sense of the beauties and uses of the art of dollmaking. Glad also am I to state, that little George, with all his dreaminess, remained a most dutiful, sweet-tempered boy; and might be seen, seven hours at least out of the twenty-four, seated on a threelegged stool, fitting the legs and arms of the ligneous hopes of the little girls of Hildesheim; his thoughts it may be, far far away with the fiddling goblin of the Brockenberg, -making holiday with the multitude of spirits in the Hartz Mountains. This mental abstraction on the part of little George was but too often * One of the most touching instances of the “maternal instinct” as it has been called, in children, came under my notice a few months ago. A wretched woman, with an infant in her arms- mother and child in very tatters-solicited the alms of a nursery-maid passing with a child, clothed in the most luxurious manner, hugging a large wax-doll. The mother followed the girl, begging for relief "to get bread for her child," whilst the child itself, gazing at the treasure in the arms of the baby of prosperity cried, “ Mammy, when will you buy me a doll ?" I have met with few things more affecting than the contrast of the destitute parent, begging for bread (the misery seemed real), and the beggar's child begging of its mother for " a doll !" forced upon the observation of the worthy Hans, the young doll-maker constantly giving the looks and limbs of hobgoblins to the faces and bodies of dolls, intended by the father to supply the demand for household dolls of the same staid and prudish aspect, of the same proportion of members, as the dolls that had for two hundred years soothed and delighted the little maidens of Hildesheim. It is a fact hitherto unknown in England, that in the Museum at Hildesheim-a beautiful, though somewhat heavy building of the Saxon order—there are either eleven or twelve (I think twelve) demon dolls made by young Wieland, and to this day shown to the curious—though the circumstance has strangely enough remained unnoticed by the writers of Guide Books, as faithful portraits of the supernatural inhabitants of the Harz Mountains. I am told, however, that within the last three years one of the figures has been removed into a separate chamber, and is only to be seen by an express order from the town council, in consequence of its lamentable effects on the nerves of a certain German princess, who was so overcome by the exhibition, that it was very much to be feared that the whole of the principality-extending in territory at least a mile and a quarter, and containing no less than three hundred and twenty subjects-will pass to a younger brother, or, what is worse, be the scene of a frightful revolution, an heir direct being wanted to consolidate the dynasty. This unfortunate event, though, possibly, fatal to the future peace of the said principality, is, nevertheless, a striking instance of the powerful imagination, or rather of the retentive memory of young Wieland. The doll, like all the others, is a true copy from diabolic life : how the painful story attached to it should have escaped all the foreign correspondents of all the newspapers, is a matter of surpassing astonishment. We now arrive at an important change in the life of our hero. His father had received a munificent order for three dolls from Prince Gotheoleog, a great patron of the fine arts in all their many branches. The dolls were intended by the prince-he was the best and most indulgent of fathers--as presents for his daughters; and, therefore, no pains, no cost were to be spared upon them. After a lapse of three months the order was completed; and young Wieland, then in his seventh year, was dressed in his holiday suit, and—the dolls being carried by Peter Shnicht, an occasional assistant of Hans Wieland—he took his way to the palace of the prince. It was about half-past twelve when he arrived there, and the weather being extremely sultry, George sat down on the palace steps to rest and compose himself before he ventured to knock at the gate. He had remained there but a short time, when he was addressed by a tall, majestic-looking person, clothed in a huntsman's suit, and carrying a double-barrel gun, a weapon used in the neighbourhood of Hildesheim in boar-shooting, who, asking our hero his name and business, was struck with the extraordinary readiness of the boy's answers, and, more than all, with a certain look of diabolic reverence peeping from his eyes, and odd smiles playing about his mouth. The stranger knocked at the gate, gave his gun to a servant, and bade the little doll- maker follow the domestic, who showed him into a sumptuous apartment. The reader is prepared to find in the man with the gun no other person than Prince Gotheoleog himself, who in a few minutes reappeared to George, asked him, in the most condescending manner, various questions respecting his proficiency in reading and writing, and finally dismissed him with the reward of ten groschen for his extraordinary intelligence. Six months after this Prince Gotheoleog was appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James's, and young Wieland attended him in the humble, yet most honourable capacity of page. This appointment, Hans Wieland in his simplicity believed would effectually win his romantic son from his errant habits, would cure him of day-dreaming, by plunging him neck deep into the affairs of this world. Alas! it had precisely the reverse effect upon the diplomatic doll-maker: from the moment that he found himself associated, though in the slightest degree with politics, the latent desire to play the devil burst forth with inextinguishable ardour. A sense of duty-a filial regard for the prejudices of his father-did for a time restrain him from throwing up his very lucrative and most promising situation in the household of Prince Gotheoleog, and kept him to the incessant toil, the unmitigated drudgery of diplomatic life; but, having one luckless night gained admission into the gallery of the House of Commons on the debate of a certain question, to which I shall not more particularly allude, and there having seen and heard a certain member, whose name I shall not specify, sway and convulse the senate, George resolved from that moment to play the devil, and nothing but the devil to the end of his days. He immediately retired to Bellamy's, and penned his resignation to Prince Gotheoleog, trusting, with the confidence of true genius, to fortune, to his own force of character, or, what is more likely, without once thinking of the means or accidents, to obtain the end of his indomitable aspirations—an appearance as the devil. Unrivalled as Wieland is, as the representative of the fiend in all his thousand shapes -to be sure the great advantages of our hero's education in the Hartz Mountains are not to be forgotten-it is yet to be regretted that he “ To the playhouse gave up what was meant for mankind." It is, and must ever be a matter of sorrow not only to his best wishers, but to the friends of the world at large, that those high qualifications, those surpassing powers of diabolic phlegm, vivacity, and impudevce, which have made Mr. Wieland's devils the beau ideal of the infernal, had not been suffered to ripen in the genial clime of diplomacy. In the full glow of my admiration of his diabolic beauties—that is, since the facts above narrated have been in my possession—I have often scarcely suppressed a sigh to think how great an ambassador has been sacrificed in a play-house fiend. Indeed, nothing can be more truly diplomatic than the supernatural shifts of Wieland. Had he acted in France in the days of Napoleon, he had been kidnapped from the stage, and nolens volens, made a plenipotentiary. It is a painful theme to dwell upon the strugglings of modest, and, consequently, unsupported genius. Therefore, I shall, at least for the present, suppress a very long and minute account of the trials that beset our hero in his attempts to make known the wonders that were in him. I shall not relate how he was flouted by one manager, snubbed by another, derisively smiled upon by a third ; how, at length, he obtained a footing in the theatre, but was condemned to act the minor iniquities, less gifted men being promoted to play the devil himself. In all these trials, however, in all these disappointments and occasional heart cver burnings, the genius of our hero continued to ripen. His horns still budded, and his tail gave token of great promise; and, at length, he burst upon the town, from top to toe, intus et in cute, a perfect and most dainty devil. Great as his success has been, I should not have thus lengthily dwelt upon it, were I not convinced of its future increase. There are great mysteries in Wieland--a part of his infant wanderings in the Hartz-yet to be revealed. I feel certain from the demoniacal variety of his humour, that there are yet a legion of spirits, fantastic and new, yet to be shown to us; all of them the old acquaintances of our hero's babyhood, all from the same genuine source of romance as his “ Devil on Two Sticks,” his “ Devil of the Danube," and his “ Devil of the Opera.” Having discussed the professional merits of Mr. Wieland, the reader may probably feel curious respecting the private habits of a man so distinguished by his supernatural emotions. I am enabled, it is with considerable satisfaction I avow it, to satisfy the laudable anxiety of the reader, and from the same authentic materials that have supplied the principal part of this notice. Mr. Wieland is a gentleman of the most retired and most simple manners. After the severest rehearsals of a new devil, he has been known to recreate himself in the enclosure of St. James's Park; and further, to illustrate his contemplative and benevolent habits, by flinging to the various water-fuwl in the canal—by the way, in imitation of a great regal authority--fragments of cakes and biscuits. His dress is of the plainest kind, being commonly a snuff-coloured coat buttoned up to the neck; a white cravat, drab small clothes, and drab kneegaiters. A gold-headed cane, said to have been in the possession of Cornelius Agrippa, is sometimes in his hand. He is occasionally induced to take a pinch of snuff, but was never seen to smoke. His face is as well known at the British Museum as are the Elgin Marbles, Mr. Wieland having for some years been employed on a new edition of the “Talmud.” Although a German by birth, Mr. Wieland speaks English with remarkable purity, having had the advantage of early instruction in our language from a British dramatist, who, driven from the stage by the invasion of French pieces, sought to earn his precarious bread as a journeyman doll-maker with Mr. Wieland, senior. We could enter into further particulars, but shall commit a violence upon ourselves, and here wind up what we trust will henceforth prove a model for all stage biographies. The inquiring reader may possibly desire to learn how we became possessed of the valuable documents from which the above narrative is gathered. To this we boldly make answer: we blush not, whilst we avow, that our dear friend Dullandry has a careless habit of carrying his most valuable communications for “ The Wet Blanket” in his coatpocket; and that only on Thursday last we overtook him, with his papers peeping from their sanctuary, when-when in a word the temptation was too much for us, and the consequence is, that the readers of “ The New Monthly” have “ Some Account of a tage Devil.” Why should all dramatic truths be confined to the impartial and original pages of " The Wet Blanket?": SHAKSPEARE's HISTORICAL PLAYS CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY.-NO. V.* BY THE RIGHT HON. T. P. COURTENAY. I now come to a play illustrative of a period which lias recently been the subject of elaborate research. Indeed, not only the play of “ Henry the Fifth," but that which precedes it are the object of historical criticisms, rather more particular than those which have been applied to preceding plays, but not one of these goes deeper than the comparatively modern Chronicles to which Shakspeare himself resorted. Even Malone never corrects Hall or Holinshed from more ancient historical records. This remark is in no degree applicable to Mr. Tyler, to whose memoirs of Henry the Fifth I have already referred, or to Sir Harris Nicolas, whose history of the battle of Agincourt I deem, notwithstanding a few faults which I still find with its conclusions, a pattern for historical pieces.t The necessity of going farther than the chronicles, if one would ascertain how far Shakspeare may be received as an historian, appears in the first scene of this play. The Archbishop of Canterbury I and the Bishop of Ely $ are introduced at the court at Kenilworth lamenting that in parliament “That self bill is urged, If it pass against us, Would they strip from us." And the archbishop then enumerates the earls, knights, and esquires, whom this diverted revenue would “ maintain to the king's honour,' besides supporting a great many poor people, and yielding to the king a yearly surplus of 10001. Ely. This would drink deep. Cant. 'Twould drink the cup and all." In considering how this fatal blow is to be averted, the prelates advert to Henry's disposition and altered character, in terms which, for several reasons, I must quote : * Continued from No. ccxiii., p. 57. + Sir H. Nicolas is not only full and precise in his references, but he gives at length in his appendix the passages upon which he founds his history. I feel inyself justified in referring to him, in many cases, instead of naming each separate authority which he quotes. I wish that Mr. Tyler had enabled me to show him equal respect. Henry Chicheley, the founder of All Souls' College. He was born in 1632, succeeded Archbishop Arundel in March, 1414, and died in 1443. John Fordham appears to have been Bishop of Ely at this time, but I know not why Shakspeare selects him.-Godwin, 266. |