cussions of metaphysical passion, such as in the days of yore were wont to be agitated in the courts and parliaments of love. Some puzzling dilemma, or metaphysical abstraction, is argued between the personages on the stage, whose dialogue, instead of presenting a scene of natural passion, exhibits a sort of pleading, or combat of logic, in which each endeavours to defend his own opinion by catching up the idea expressed by the former speaker, and returning him his illustration, or simile, at the rebound; and where the lover hopes every thing from his ingenuity, and trusts nothing to his passion.

This kind of Amabæan dialogue was early ridiculed by the ingenious author of "Hudibras." It partakes more of the Spanish than of the French tragedy, although it does not demand that the parody shall be so very strict, as to reecho noun for noun, or verb for verb, which Lord Holland gives us as a law of the age of Lope de Vega. The English heroic poet did enough if he displayed sufficient point in the dialogue, and alertness in adopting and retorting the image presented by the preceding speech; though, if he could twist the speaker's own words into an answer to his argument, it seems to have been held the more ingenious mode of confutation.

While the hero of a rhyming tragedy was thus unboundedly submissive in love, and dexterous in applying the metaphysical logic of amorous jurisprudence, it was essential to his character that he should possess all the irresistible courage and fortune of a preux chevalier. Numbers, however unequal, were to be as chaff before the whirlwind of his valour; and nothing was to be so impossible, that, at the command of his mistress, he could not with ease achieve. When, in the various changes of fortune which such tragedies demand, he quarrelled with those whom he had before assisted to conquer,

"Then to the vanquished part his fate he led,

The vanquished triumphed, and the victor fled. " The language of such a personage, unless when engaged in argumentative dialogue with his mistress, was, in all respects, as magnificent and inflated as might beseem his irresistible prowess. ness the famous speech of Almanzor.

"Almanz. To live!

If from thy hands alone my death can be,

I am immortal, and a god to thee.

If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop ere I can give the blow;
But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,

Wit

Piled on thy back, can never call it down:
But, at my ease, thy destiny I send,
By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.
Like heaven, I need but only to stand still,

And, not concurring to thy life, I kill.
Thou canst no title to my duty bring;

I'm not thy subject, and my soul's thy king.
Farewell. When I am gone,

There's not a star of thine dare stay with thee:
I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me;
And whirl fate with me whereso'er I fly,

As winds drive storms before them in the sky.

It was expected by the audience, that the pomp of scenery, and bustle of action, in which such tremendous heroes were engaged, should in some degree correspond with their lofty sentiments and superhuman valour. Hence solemn feasts, processions, and battles by sea and land, filled the theatre. Hence, also, the sudden and violent changes of fortune, by which the hero and his antagonists are agitated through the whole piece. Fortune has been often compared to the sea; but, in a heroic play, her course resembled an absolute Bay of Biscay, or Race of Portland, disturbed by an hundred contending currents and eddies, and never continuing a moment in one steady flow.

That no engine of romantic surprise might be wanting, Dryden contends, that the dramatist, as he is not confined to the probable in character, so he is not limited by the bounds of nature in the action, but may let himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation of such things as, not depending upon sense, leave free exercise for the imagination. Indeed, if ghosts, magicians and demons, might with propriety claim a place anywhere, it must be in plays which, throughout, disclaim the common rules of nature, both in the incidents narrated, and the agents interested.

Lastly, the action of the heroic drama was to be laid, not merely in the higher, but in the very highest walk of life. No one could with decorum aspire to share the sublimities which it annexed to character, except those made of the " porcelain clay of the earth, ". dukes, princes, kings, and kaisars. The matters agitated must be of moment, proportioned to their characters and elevated station, the fate of cities and the fall of kingdoms.'

It is not an unprofitable curiofity to fearch for the principles of epidemical bad taste. Thefe, perhaps, in the inftance of rhyming tragedies, it is not hard to difcover. There is but a narrow walk between the fublime and the tumid; and a promifcuous audience is feldom quicklighted enough to diftinguish the limits. A fober citizen who frequents the theatre, muft have accuftomed himself to make fuch large allowances, to put himself into a state of mind fo totally different from his every-day habits, that a little extraordinay deviation from nature, fo far from fhocking him, will rather fhow like a further advance towards excellence. Hotfpur and Almanzor, Richard and Aurengzebe, feem caft in the fame. mould; beings who never occur in the common walks of life, but whom the tragedian has, by a tacit convention with his audience, acquired the right of feigning, like his ghofts and witches. Whether

Whether thefe unnatural reprefentations could have stood their ground in competition with a better ftyle, had Mailinger or any of that fchool been furviving, is another queftion; probably they would not have had much fuccefs; becaufe, though they intoxicated the imagination, they never came to the heart. But they were aided by greater fplendour of decoration than the stage had heretofore poffeffed; by fuperior actors, especially Betterton; and by female performers, who had never appeared on the stage before the Reftoration. To thefe recommendations, the tragedies of Dryden added much vigour of fentiment, and much beautiful poetry; with a verfification fweet, even to lusciousness.

The

Conquest of Grenada' is, on account of its extravagance, the moft celebrated of thefe plays; but we much prefer the Indian Emperor,' from which it would be eafy to felect many paffages of perfect elegance. It is fingular, that although the rythm of dramatic verfe is commonly permitted to be the moft lax of any, Dryden has in this play indulged himfelf in none of his wonted. privileges. He regularly clofes the fenfe with the couplet; and falls into a fmoothness of cadence, which, though exquifitely mellifluous, is perhaps too uniform. In the Conqueft of Grenada, the verfification is rather more broken.

The rhyming plays of Dryden are so much forgotten, that we shall illustrate their harmony and elegance by an extract from the Indian Emperor.

Vasq. Corn, oil, and wine, are wanting to this ground,
In which our countries fruitfully abound;

As if this infant world, yet unarrayed,
Naked and bare in Nature's lap were laid.
No useful arts have yet found footing here,
But all untaught and savage does appear.

Cort. Wild and untaught are terms which we alone
Invent, for fashions differing from our own;

For all their customs are by Nature wrought,

But we, by art, unteach what Nature taught.

Piz. In Spain, our springs, like old men's children, be
Decayed and withered from their infancy :

No kindly showers fall on our barren earth,
To hatch the season in a timely birth:
Our summer such a russet livery wears,

As in a garment often dyed appears.

Cort. Here Nature spreads her fruitful sweetness round,
Breathes on the air, and broods upon the ground:

Here days and nights the only seasons be;

The sun no climate does so gladly see;

When forced from hence, to view our parts, he mourns;
Takes little journies, and makes quick returns.

Vasq. Methinks, we walk in dreams on Fairy-land,
Where golden ore lies mixt with common sand;
Each downfall of a flood, the mountains pour
From their rich bowels, rolls a silver shower. '

Ind. Emp. Act. I. Sc. I. The merits, however, of these lines, are far removed from the highest class of dramatic excellence. It is probable that a more intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare, induced Dryden, fortunately for his own glory, to forsake this corrupt imitation of the French stage, and to adopt a very different, though not altogether faultless, style of tragedy. His principal works of this latter class, are All for Love' in 1678; the 'Spanish Friar,' in 1682; and Don Sebastian,' in 1690. Upon these the dramatic fame of Dryden is built, while the rants of Almanzor and Maximin are never mentioned but in ridicule. We would quote from Mr Scott's criticisms upon these plays, were they not too expanded for our limits. The chief excellence of All for Love,' appears to us to consist in the beauty of the language; that of the Spanish Friar,' in the interest of the story; and that of Sebastian,' in the highly finished character of Dorax. The praise bestowed by our editor upon this part, though abundant, is not misplaced. Dorax is indeed the chef-d'œuvre of Dryden's tragic characters, and perhaps the only one, in which he has applied his great knowledge of human kind to actual delineation. It is highly dramatic, because formed of those complex feelings, which may readily lead either to virtue or vice, and which the poet can manage, so as to surprise the spectator, without transgressing consistency. The Zanga of Young, a part of great theatrical effect, has been compounded of this character and of that of Iago. But Don Sebastian is as imperfect as all plays must be, in which a single personage is thrown forward in too strong relief for the rest. The language is full of that rant which characterized Dryden's earlier tragedies, and to which a natural predilection seems, after some interval, to have brought him back. Sebastian himself may seem to have been intended as a contrast to Muley Moloch; but, if the author had any rule to distinguish the blustering of the hero from that of the tyrant, he has not left the use of it in his reader's hands. The plot of this tragedy is ill compacted, especially in the fifth act. Perhaps the delicacy of the present age has been too fastidious in excluding altogether from the drama this class of stories; because they may often excite great interest, give scope to impassioned poetry, and are admirably calculated for the avayvagiis, or discovery, which is so much dwelt upon by the critics; nor can the story of Edipus, which has furnished one of the finest and most artful tragedies ever written,

be

be well thought an improper subject in the closet, were we even to exclude it from representation. But they require, of all others, to be dexterously managed; they may make the main distress of a tragedy, but not an episode in it. Our feelings revolt at seeing, as in Don Sebastian, an incestuous passion brought forward as the makeweight of a plot, to eke out a fifth act; and to dispose of those characters whose fortune the main story has not quite wound up. So far as diction is concerned, the Spanish Friar,' and All for Love,' are certainly the best plays of Dryden. They are the least infected with his great fault, bombast; and should indeed be read over and over by those who would learn the true tone of English tragedy. In dignity, in animation, in striking images and figures, there are few or none that excel them: the power, indeed, of impressing sympathy, or commanding tears, was seldom placed by nature within the reach of Dryden.

Of the Spanith Friar, Johnfon gives it as current praife, which is echoed by the prefent editor, that it contains a happy coincidence of coalition of the two plots.' We cannot conceive the principle of this commendation. The artifice of combining two distinct ftories upon the ftage, is, we fuppofe, either to interweave the incidents of one into thofe of the other, or at least fo to connect fome characters with each intrigue, as to make the fpectator fancy them lefs diftinct than they are. Thus, to take the firft instance that prefents itfelf, in the Merchant of Venice,' the courtship of Baffanio and Portia, is happily connected with the main plot of Anthonio and Shylock by two circumftances: it is to fet Baffanio forward in his fuit, that the fatal bond is first given; and it is by Portia's addrefs, that its forfeiture is explained away. The fame play furnishes an inftance of another fort of underplot, that of Lorenzo and Jeflica, which is quite episodical, and might have been removed without any material lofs to the fable. To which of thefe do the comic scenes in the Spanish Friar' bear most resemblance? Certainly to the latter. They confift entirely of an intrigue which Lorenzo, a young officer, carries on with a rich old ufurer's wife; but there is not, even by accident, any relation between his adventures, and the love and murder which goes. forward in the palace. The Spanifh Friar,' fo far as it is a comedy, is reckoned the beft feat which Dryden has achieved in that line. Father Dominic is read with pleasure, and must have been feen with more ; he has been copied pretty freely by fucceeding writers, efpecially in the Duenna.' But there is no great abundance of wit in this or any of his comedies. His jokes are practical; and he feems to have written, like certain eminent perfons of our own time, rather for the eye than the ear. It may be noted as a proof of this, that his flage directions are unusually full.

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