shionable tragedy none but particular words or phrases were to be tolerated, excluding half the language as not possessed of sufficient dignity. The Alexandrine was the legitimate measure; inflation was taken for grandeur, and the pomp of the court was infused into the literature to make it worthy of the grand monarque and his courtezans. How Racine, the father of this stilted courtly style, and other writers, succeeded so well, under such ignoble restrictions as they burthened themselves with, can only be accounted for by the capacity of genius for surmounting extraordinary obstacles.* Prior to this change, France had a sort of free cycle; she had her Marots, Jodelles, Bellays, Baifs, Ronsards, &c. &c. Corneille had refined upon them to excess; but in the judgment of the court he did not go far enough: - thus every thing was forced into artificial greatness; bloatedness of bulk seemed to be mistaken for sublimity; and the glitter of Palais Royal paste for the pure splendour of the diamond. It was in this spirit that the land was covered with chateaux to imitate Versailles, and that the nobles ruined their fortunes and ground their tenants in the dust, in imitation of the monarch's waste of his subject's wealth.

The rage for imitating the ancients, it may justly be contended, did little in the way of the introduction of a pure taste. Stage costume was as barbarous as ever. Court wigs were worn in the 17th century by the Alexanders and Cæsars of the buskin, perhaps to assimilate them to Louis le grand. Shepherds wore embroidered silks, rivers appeared in red stockings, and Alpheus made love in a fair full-bottomed periwig and a plume of feathers. The refinements of that age, either in poetry or the arts, did not arise from genuine taste; they were the accidental results of fashion. True taste can only prevail and influence a nation where the road to excellence is free, and a generous emulation incites all to strive in overtaking it. The freer spirit of later times, the increase of knowledge, and the more general habit of thinking and reasoning, have created a standard of opinion and a juster taste upon all subjects; and France will shortly be little inclined to submit to the dictation of the court of Louis XIV. on subjects of literature. With us pastorals are no longer written in garrets; or treatises on manners by collegians, who have never passed the bounds of alma mater. If our poets describe daybreak, they do not now write about Phoebus harnessing the steeds of day and driving away Nox; Eolus no longer makes our storms, Jupiter our thunder, or Neptune our earthquakes; nor are we sickened to death, as we once were, by lectures on syllogism, and figure, terms, propositions, and predicates-these slumber peacefully in our universities. Our riddance of them we owe to what is called by Madame de Staël le genre romantique, but which, in reality, means nothing more than the freedom of adopting what is reconcileable to reason, instead of following custom. Monsieur Jouy has lately written a tragedy, called "Sylla," wholly regardless of precedent, and has met with the most flattering success. The French are eager for works that possess freedom, delineate passion, and create emotion by a close adherence to nature-in short, by an attachment to

* The Editor coincides in general with the sentiments expressed in this article ; but he deprecates giving his sanction to the manner in which the writer speaks of Racine, of whose exquisite genius the author of the article seems to be insensible.

the" romantic school :" not, however,the littérature romantique of Madame de Staël, born of chivalry and christianity, but the simple adherence to the most perfect representation of nature. The Germans have long ago entered into definitions of this term, when in France it would have been heresy. But now, in the latter country, the combatants are engaged in the same argument, and it is no longer heterodox to the people. While the classics follow the rules of Aristotle and the court of Louis, holding that laws made by the ancients should regulate all future writers, cling closely to the unities, reject all words except those that have been legitimatized by precedent, severely cut up language, pare every thing to the core, and rob all imagery of its sharpness; they forget that French literature must be identified in time, language, climate, and mythology with the ancient, before the latter can be ar ranged side by side with it in the contest. The romantics may attack the French classics, and not fire a shot at the ancients through them; the term classic may, therefore, be better understood, as it regards the present dispute, by opposing the style of Dryden's "Tyrannic Love" to the "Macbeth" of Shakspeare.

The romantics insist that their opponents do not paint nature faithfully; that their colours are gaudy, artificial, and forced; that they reject expressions of natural feeling, and substitute the language of the writer instead of that which the supposed speaker would naturally use in his circumstances. That they adhere to the unities, under the idea of rendering the drama perfect to spectators, when impossible things must still remain in every tragedy, even when the unities are carefully preserved. That a tragedy in which the unity of time is preserved agreeably to rule, will be performed in two hours, though it would have occupied eighteen or twenty in reality. Thus, as great an infringement on the unity of time often takes place when the technical law is pre served, as a change of scene for a hundred miles between the acts would be in the unity of place. Furthermore, no audience has ever been deceived into the belief of the truth of what was represented before it on the stage-the very house and audience belie such a deception; it only expects to see an approximation to truth, a semblance of what has occurred before. Here the romantics have far the better of the argument. The hero of a romantic tragedy is made to speak in his situation all he would naturally utter were he the character he represents. The "classic school" gives only the language of the poet, and sinks nature in high-flown phrase and lofty declamation-in the language of actors, and not of those who feel. This arises from the modern classic school being imitators only, for the ancients kept to the truth of nature as it exhibited itself in their day, and wrote agreeably to their customs. Can it be consistent, then, that modern tragedy should possess no national truth, but be merely the reflection of antiquity! The romantics assert that truth and nature must be followed as closely as possible, and that where this is adhered to, the effect must be more perfect, nature being always the same. In describing her emotions in the passion of love, for example, that writer will be most correct whose delineations impress the greatest number of readers with their force and truth; his judges will then comprehend the greatest number of hearers, because all understand what is natural; -while the poet of the classic school will call in Cupid to his aid, or substitute general phrases,

and the fruits of closet learning, for the exquisite developement of the passion itself and a knowledge of its effects on the human heart. Venus and Cupid have no place in our mythology. They are calculated to arouse in a Grecian bosom feelings in which we cannot participate. The "classic school" has adopted not only the mythology but the brief language and peculiarities of ancient feelings and habits, and endeavoured to introduce them into nations with opinions, temperaments, and a mythology totally different, cramping genius and tying down a writer to rules, a breach of which consigned him to the anathemas of the court and the Academy.* Hence the genius of France seemed incapable of any new flight, it was confined in a narrow space, and no one dared venture into a region of literary novelty. It must be confessed, however, that before the Revolution it required transcendent talents to break the thraldom in which genius was entramelled.

"La nation Française," says De Staël, "la plus cultivée des nations latines, penche vers la poésie classique imitée des Grecs et des Romains; la nation Anglaise, la plus illustre des nations Germaniques, aime la poésie romantique et chevaleresque, et se glorifie des chefs-d'œuvre qu'elle possède en ce genre." It may be justly doubted, however, whether this definition has much to do with the present question. The French may lean in style towards the ancient writers, but the advocates for disenthraldom from the classic school, neither want a literature romanesque or chevaleresque; they demand a literature which, while the characters and incidents it describes may be modern and even national, or barbarous or of remote eras, shall be penned with a fidelity adapted to the universal feeling of truth in every age and nation. They wish to have tragedy which shall be neither Greek nor Roman, but French; in short they desire pictures of nature on the model of Shakspeare, and not of something neither ancient nor modern, a gallico-latin medley, to preserve the servility of which originality and nature must be sacrificed-they want high-wrought passion and fine feeling in simple language. The exclusive character of classic, as an imitation of the ancients, with which the French Academy dignifies such writings, is clearly a misnomer. Those writers alone are the classics of a nation whose works, sanctioned by public approbation, have established a lasting fame. Shakspeare is as much an English classic, in the national sense of the term, as the author of Cato-Burns as Pope. Whether a writer be an imitator of the ancients or be an original, if the labours of his genius obtain for him lasting celebrity, he is a classic of his country. But the French Academy, adopting the style of literature of countries in which the manners and language were different from their own, in place of fostering a literature adapted to the language and feeling of the people, claim to be exclusively classic, while a national literature must be the expression of society.

Great things arise from small beginnings. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive, in the present dispute, the dawn of a new era of literature in France. The writers who have come forth in battle order against the Academy (or Sorbonne, as it is now dubbed) are men

* If the French classic school has, in some instances, been more true to nature and feeling than in others, it is because it insensibly leaned at the time toward the principles of its opponents.

of zeal and genius; they have the public on their side, and the government and Academy against them this alone helps their cause. The ministry is an object of dislike, and its measures are regarded with just suspicion by the people. The public taste on literary subjects might have been influenced before the Revolution, but that time is gone by. Literature is no longer the tool of the government, but belongs to the nation. The present contest will be decided in the theatres; the structure of the drama will be changed, and the innovations first introduced will make the impression irresistible.

MM. Stendhal (Beyle), Soumet, Ancelot, Nodier, &c. &c. have openly appeared as advocates of a free national literature, or on the side of the "Romantics;" they possess talent sufficient to keep the subject alive and promote the abrogation of the decrees that have enchained French literature, if not by the peculiar excellence of their writings, yet by their novelty and the interest they excite in the public mind. They are aided by translations from the English and German writers of the "Romantic school;" and other writers will no doubt appear in France, who, giving the rein to imagination, and finding themselves free from their former bondage, will give their country a new and more exalted literature than it has ever yet known.

Horace Walpole says of Lord Chatham, that he not only wished to see his own country free, but also all other nations-a desire in which he probably stood alone among the statesmen of his country. Let us cherish a similar spirit in regard to French literature; let us rejoice to see it emancipated from the shackles of tyrants and courtiers, and follow the line of truth and nature. In its renovated state it may furnish an object of rivalry to our men of genius, instead of chilling them with its affectation, fatiguing them with its monotony, and disgusting them with its pompous pretensions, notwithstanding brilliant pens have heretofore submitted to its guidance. Y. I.

SONNET FROM PETRARCH.

"Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade."

My green and flowery age was passing by,
And in my heart I felt Love's fire declining.
And to that downward slope my step drew nigh,
Where life is to the vale of years inclining.
Already was my gentle enemy,

By slow degrees, her doubts and fears resigning,
And with her mild and sweet security,

To looks of joy had turned my sad repining.
And now the time was nigh, when Love can meet
With chastity and lovers side by side,
Can fondly sit in converse calmly sweet;
But Death such happiness to me denied,
He like an armed foe beset my way,
Broke my frail reed, and rent my hopes away.

PRINTED BY MISTAKE.

"Redeemed from tapers and defrauded pies."

РОРЕ.

I WAS sitting by my fire-side in a dozing, dreaming, Lethean sort of half-consciousness, with just thought enough to enable me to enjoy my thoughtlessness, a mood of mind in which I indulge with a particular complacency, when my servant abruptly entered to inform me that a porter had called for my contribution to the New Monthly. "The New Monthly!" I exclaimed, with an indignant surprise,-"I sent it a fortnight ago." True, Sir, but that was for last month's." Impossible!-what is to-day?"-"The tenth."- "Well, then, it is now too late-and when he called last it was too early;-I will not be pestered :-I am determined to let my head lie fallow a little ;-desire him to call again this day three months."

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Really, I continued, stirring the sleepy fire, as if determined to make it share my annoyance,-really there is no satisfying this monstrous maw of the Monthly Minotaur,-(I love alliteration); I thought he was to demand but twelve sacrifices in the year, but his months spring up like mushrooms;--one might as well live in the planet Jupiter, where there are, or ought to be, a hundred and forty-four in the year. Besides, I am exhausted, used up, my head is a vacuum, my brains with the pia-mater and pia-dura, cerebrum and cerebellum, have been seized by the press-gang, conveyed to Conduit-street, and poured into the printer's founts, those literal pitchers of the Belides. What! twelve crops in succession, and no respite allowed for manuring the mental soil, and putting my head in heart, (pardon the catachresis, ye agrestic readers!)-Va, via !-editorial reproaches, I give ye to the winds-fallow shalt thou lie, my over-ploughed pate, till" darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory" do choak thy furrows.

Authors are said to be like flambeaux, which consume themselves in giving light to others; if so, I must have been a monstrous illuminator, for never was an intellect more effectually burnt out. Not that my faculties are extinct, but that I cannot find new materials for their exercise. Like Saturn, I have devoured all my own children (of the brain); what I have not written others have; I am worse off, by all the subsequent authors, than the writer who complained that Shakspeare had taken all his good things. I am at a greater loss for subjects than an ex-king, and

"Never subject long'd to be a king,

As I do long and wish to find a subject:"

But it is in vain; every thing is stale, hacknied, threadbare. There is nothing in heaven, or earth, or the waters under the earth, into which our pens have not dipped. Mind and matter have been equally ferreted, anaÏyzed, turned inside out. Alexanders in literature, we have conquered the old world, and want a new one sadly.

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"And, whereas before," said Jack Cade, upbraiding Lord Treasurer Say, our forefathers had no other book but the score and tally, thou hast caused Printing to be; and contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill, &c." What would this legitimate enemy to innovation say now, were he to sit down upon London stone, and hear a list of our new publications read to him?——