rather than the ultra-poet. It requires no great depth of penetration to see which will best succeed upon the stage: Bertram had a greater run than all the other tragedies of the day put together. But I have done. Now for the remarks, objections, or animadversions, with which these letters may be, or have been honoured.

First, it may be said, that I do not go deep enough for the causes to which the degeneracy of the stage is rightly attributable: that it is owing to a radical deficiency of dramatic genius amongst our living writers; and that the use of undramatic lan guage, to which I chiefly impute the present low state of our national tragedy, is merely an effect of the above-mentioned deficiency,-inasmuch as a true dramatic spirit, if it existed, would direct our writers to the choice of true dramatic language. To this I reply, that I never pretended to attribute modern dramatic degeneracy to a mere mistake of language rectifiable at pleasure. It is very evident from my repeated assertions that our modern tragedists are mere poets, it is very evident from this, that I consider them as deficient in the article of dramatic genius. I have had the impudence to tell, even the Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, himself one of our best tragic writers, that he does not know the difference between drama and common poetry! But what would be the use of ascending so high in the chain of causes, or of insisting upon this matter of fact? If I had thought it a thing worth while, to investigate the original causes why modern tragedy is so miserable, I might have gone much higher than the deficiency of dramatic genius; for this is itself but an effect of the circumstances of the age, and these but the effect of the age preceding. So that, if such had been my intention, it were easy to have spun out an infinite series of causes, as long as an algebraical formula, and nearly as useful to dramatists. I know this is a very easy and a very favorite method with critics; I am aware that it affords frequent opportunities of displaying ingenuity without utility, and learning without information. Contenting themselves with pointing out the remote causes of our general failure on the stage, which are beyond our

reach and above our control, they overpass the proximate causes, which are immediately open to remedy, and over which we may exercise some influence. Meagreness of plot, monotony of cadence, emptiness of incident, deficiency of action, energy, and business, are tangible subjects: by drawing the attention of our writers to these, and by endeavouring to impress on their minds the necessity of pursuing an opposite system of composition, a "nascent impulse towards legitimate dramatism may be created." This has been my process. If, indeed, dramatic genius be wholly and solely an innate faculty of the mind, these letters are futile productions; but if, as I am inclined to think, it be partly the creature of circumstances, if the power of producing stage effect be in any part an acquirable faculty, then we may hope that by directing the genius of our writers to the legi timate methods and practices of successful dramatists, and by demonstrating the impropriety and unfitness of their own, they will gradually regenerate the spirit of ancient tragedy. Suppose (and, by the by, it is but a modest presumption in a theorist), suppose the preceding letters have converted one reader to my opinion; suppose he converts another, and so on; by this simple method of proselytism (if the theory be sound), I may anticipate, somewhat on the principle of Bobadil, the final conversion of the whole nation. Then indeed might I exclaim in the last words of the Epilogue to a celebrated satire (O that the time were come !)— 'Tis I, John Lacy, have reform'd the stage!

Another objection to be refuted,

is, that the genius or disposition of the present age is inimical to the regeneration of the stage, and the growth of dramatic talent. This is a petitio principii; the indifference with which dramas written in the effeminate spirit of the age, are received, is some proof that the public taste is not altogether depraved, and that a genuine tragedy would obtain patronage and applause. Besides, granting the truth of the objection, if the disposition of the age be not wholly incorrigible, how is it to be corrected? How, but by individual attempts like this (more able and equally sincere), to restore a purer taste by infusing a better spirit of

composition than now palls upon the general palate? If no more were ac complished by such attempts, they might at least annihilate and abolish the present false system of drama, leaving a clear stage for new performers who should be unbiassed by the prejudices, and ignorant of the practices, in which their predecessors so fatally and foolishly indulged.

Again, it may be said,-Why, in the face of his declaration that his plays had "no view to the stage," have I extended my remarks to the works of Lord Byron. For many reasons. First, because his plays, whether considered as mere poems or dramas, are subject to most of the animadversions made in these letters on professed stage-pieces. They are meagre in incident (i. e. in plot); they are of too prolix and effeminate a species of composition (i. e. they want action); they are inveterately prose-poetic, and it was impossible to touch upon this subject, without alluding to him who had introduced the system of prose-poetry among our declared tragedists. Secondly, being called tragedies, when, speaking in the accepted use of the word as applied to separately-distributed verse, they are not tragedies, but mere poems,-and some of them having been actually performed, they are calculated to mislead the public mind into a false notion of what real dramatic tragedy should be, and by the influence of his lord ship's name and practice, to smother

whatever genuine dramatic spirit may yet remain, or might in future arise, amongst us. Not that I ascribe much of that efficacy to them, but some they undoubtedly have. Thirdly, his lordship certainly has a spice of tragic genius about him; like Beddoes, though he wrote-not for the stage, his plays exhibit more of the vis tragica than those written expressly for it. And although I have some doubts whether his lordship will take my hint, to condense himself, to thicken his plot with incidents, eschew prose-poetry, con→ temn joinery, in a word, to attempt a legitimate tragedy,-yet he might do so, and possibly, at some future period, may. These reasons are I hope sufficient to excuse the liberty I have so frequently taken with his name.

Finally, it may be observed,— If I am so dissatisfied with the works of the Dramatists of the Day, if I am so alive to their deficiencies, and so awake to their errors, if I know so well how a tragedy ought to be written,-why don't I write a tragedy myself? I who presume to condemn the tragedies of my cotemporaries as altogether unworthy of the name, why don't I write a better one myself? To this I have nothing to reply, but that when I entered on the subject of these letters, I had no expectation of being met with such unanswerable arguments, and therefore have made no provision for them. JOHN LACY.

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fire at Riversdale, and are now, perhaps, with the accustomed want of good-manners for which I have so often and in vain lectured their owners, peeping over your shoulder, to "see what they can see" in this letter. Let them see it; who cares? There is not a word, from beginning to end of the whole epistle, but might be published by telegraph, or written

at the foot of the banns on, a church door, to which every young Sundayeye is inevitably directed. At all events, the family staircase, as I call the ascending range of heads at Dale cottage, from grave sister Susan down to little smiling Cherry, knows all our secrets, as well as we do our selves; so you need not blush if now and then the dearest thought of my heart runs through the ink in spite of me. Kate sometimes laughs at you, and in her own arch volatile way, which one would be angry with if it were possible to keep one's countenance, torments you about, rings wedding-days-honey-moons-and Damon's picture, as the satirical minx designates my long-nosed miniature; then you grow half-vexed, whilst she (still keeping at arm's length) continues singing--" When a little farm we keep," with the most provoking play fulness. Tell her if she dares to sing that song within one cardinal hour, after the postman delivers this letter,, I will tell all I know about Some one, who sent a copy of verses to a certain young lady, the third sister in a family not a hundred miles from R

I could swear she is all a-bloom now,, -à-la-mode de rose, as we used to say; pray laugh at her.

My long habits of intimacy with your family impose on me a kind of filial and fraternal duty to render your kind parents, and all the inmates of their house, an unreserved detail of my proceedings whilst I am se parated from them; and I am ready to perform my part of the covenant which we made at parting, i. e. to preserve as familiar a style in this secondary kind of converse which letters enable us to hold, as I should were I standing in my old place at the left-hand side of the parlour fire. If you expect, however, a categorical chronological account of my life and opinions since I left the Dale cottage, you will be sadly disappointed. I may promise you an unreserved, nay, a minute detail of my proceedings, as far as I can recollect them, but I cannot assure you that it shall be either clear, consistent, or satisfactory. I speak with my pen as I do with my lips; my letters are the transcript of my mind, and you know I could never think connectedly upon any subject: how then can you expect me to write coherently? An extravagant and erring spirit." like mine, circum

scribed neither by time or place, propriety or prudence, and constant, to no one purpose or feeling (yes, yes, one, if but one)-is not to be assessed with a contribution of regular me thodical items enclosed in a letter, or required to lay before the parlia ment of friends assembled in the drawing-room, an exact return of all: its thoughts, sentiments, and percep→ tions, in due order and series, as they followed one another. To ask. me, Richard Chatterton, to sit down. every evening like a blue-stocking miss on her first tour, and write a circumstantial itinerary, an hourjournal of daily occurrences, would be little less unreasonable than toask a young wild goose to fly in a mathematical circle round your papa's farm-yard like a tame pigeon. We should both return you this plain rational answer: Many birds of many kinds, many men of many minds; Nature made us of one feather, we will. not try to soar with another. Take these letters, therefore, as you find them. If in the melange of random thoughts and scattered incidents with which they are filled, one shall be found deserving of a place in your memory, forgive, for its sake, the worthless remainder.

Thus far, however, will I be explicit: December the 19th, 1823, at six o'clock p. m. I arrived in London. By the bye, I travelled up with a very singular character, a grave hu morist, an English Diogenes; who afforded me, by the striking peculi arity of his manner, much food for meditation and petty philosophizing, which you know is my hobby. I was glad to meet with such a character, in order to get away from myself, and from more domestic thoughts; thoughts sorrowful enough, God knows, at quitting all I love, and made doubly so by the melancholy tones of the village-bell which seemed to toll for my departure from Riversdale. There is nothing in this tolling, I am well aware; it was church-time, and that was all; but every knell, as it rung through my ears, repeated, as I thought, plainly and emphatically-fare-well! farewell! whilst I was gradually leaving the village and its tapering spire be hind me. When I took my last look at the family-cottage, nested under the brow of the hill, the sounds: had diminished to a mere echo in my brain, which I think has not done.

reverberating still. How prone is the human mind to adapt indifferent things to the circumstances under which it labours! when the spirits are depressed, especially, how apt are we to think that every inanimate thing we see or hear gives dark and mournful indications of sympathy; the glade takes a deeper tinge, the woods sigh more audibly, and the tinkling peal to matins beats on the heart with the impressiveness of a passing-knell. You remember poor Juliet's words, when Romeo has descended from her chamber into the garden, and is taking his last adieu :

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Methinks I see thee now thou art below, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale.

How true to nature is this speech: the girl looking down from the window on her departing lover, converts the place where he stands into a low sepulchre, and the dim haze of twilight through which she sees him gives his cheek, to her view, the livid complexion of death. But I will melancholize no longer: let six short months pass over, and Riversdale bell shall welcome me back with the self-same chimes that knolled me

away.

Only see where I have digressed; from an English stage-coach to a garden at Verona! I was about telling you of one of my fellow passengers, the humorist, who sat in the cross-corner of the vehicle, opposite to that which I occupied. He was a florid-looking little gentleman with something of a bitter expression about his upper lip and the flexible part of his nose; his dress was plain, comfortable, but rather antiquated; and a gold-headed cane on which he leaned firmly with both his hands, (except during the interval of producing, opening, and deliberately going through the varied evolution of taking a pinch from a tortoise-shell snuff-box, which he returned with the same collect ed demeanour into his waistcoat pocket) said as plainly as gold-headed cane could speak, that the proprietor of such a responsible article was "not to be sneezed at." You may guess, I had no appetite for conversation, and the other inhabitants of the stage appeared to be restrained from a breach of taciturnity by a sense of awe which perhaps they were not themselves aware of.

At length, a glassy-faced smiling companion, who sat directly opposite the Knight of the Ruby Countenance, ventured to observe, with a bow of humble conciliation towards his side of the coach,-that amongst so many intelligent-looking persons, he was surprised no one said anything to enliven the company. The little gentleman, putting his head half-way out of the coach window, as if looking at something on the road, replied through the hither corner of his mouth,—that he had generally observed the first who broke silence among strangers was either a fool or a woman. And the second, added a prim lady beside him without moving anything but her lips apparently,a cynic. "Natural enough, madam," said her neighbour, "that the fool should be immediately taken up by the satirist; but in the case of a woman, the second speaker is oftener a coxcomb than a cynic." A violent jolt of the coach dissolved the muscles of Mrs. Prim's mouth, which were gathering themselves up for a tart reply to this insinuation; and the same jolt placed her sitting (most preposterously!) on the knee of the cynic, whom she could have eaten, (as the saying is) "with a grain of salt"-an awkward attempt of blind Fortune to reconcile the parties. I never saw such a picture of disgruntlement, when she found herself in this inconsistent situation; but whilst she muttered something inaudible or unintelligible about coxcombs and women, cynics and careless drivers, the little gentleman, who also had been somewhat embarrassed at her unexpected descent upon his lap, composed himself to sleep in his own corner.

To a being of your mild and unoffending spirit, this hostility of manner which our fellow-traveller displayed upon all occasions, would seem unaccountable. As he lay rolled up in himself, and with no part of his body approaching within an inch at least of the lady beside, or the smooth-faced personage before him, I could not help reflecting with less scepticism on that position of a modern philosopher, I believe Hobbes-that the state of nature is a state of individual enmity, and that it is only our growing wants and necessities which compress us into society together. Certainly, if we observe the manners of an infant, we

shall find little reason to conclude the existence of the elements of philanthropy within its breast. What a selfish little animal is a child at the mother's breast! It cares for nobody, nothing, but its mamma or its nurse; and for her, only as its nourisher or protector. It is not merely indifferent to others, it absolutely dislikes and rejects them. At its first entrance into the world it utters a cry of dissatisfaction, and a long time elapses before habit reconciles the little misanthrope to its fellow mortals. How seldom do we find two or more children agree, when together; amidst their plays, their toys. their feasts, and their trivial pursuits, they indulge a spirit of rapacity, envy, selfishness, and reciprocal malevolence, of which their maturer age would be ashamed. Tales and complaints, perpetual bickerings and squabbles, disgrace their short-lived amity; and it is only by the lessons of mutual benevolence which parental care may have instilled, by habit, by a growing sense of duty, and by the influence of reason, that familyaffection is at length established among them. Brute animals, we see, are for the most part inimical to those of their own species: does not this go some way in proving that we, whilst we continue in the state of brute animals, that is, until we come to the use of reason, are also at enmity with each other? I do not, for my own part, perceive any signs of an instinct leading a child to love his own species, or to prefer a stranger who walks into the room where it is playing to the dog which follows at the stranger's heels. Taking the legend as true, I have not the least doubt but that Romulus and Remus loved the she-wolf who nourished them quite as well in that shape, as if she had walked upright upon two legs and spoken rational nonsense to them, like a human wet-nurse. But I leave this curious subject of speculation to deeper heads than that which grows upon my humble shoulders.

There is a good deal of cynicism in the English character. It is, however, honourably distinguished by a certain peculiarity from that of the Grecian model; it is more a cynicism of manner than of heart. Nay, it seems often to arise from a hatred of hypocrisy, or a thorough contempt

for folly, to expose both of which is considered as the paramount duty of every honest Englishman. Diogenes in his tub, snarled on a different principle: affectation and callousness of disposition made him a cynic, not a love of plainness and sincerity, or a just scorn of impertinence and folly. An English cynic is frequently a philanthropist in disguise.

Upon our alighting for dinner at the appointed inn, our Diogenes pushing aside the driver's arm, which was politely offered to assist each passenger in getting out of the coach, brushed past the landlord as he stood with a jolly face of invitation on the flag-way before his own door, and walked fiercely up the street, holding his cane at some distance from, but parallel to, his body, and applying its golden knob, in direct contact, to the bulb of his nose. "Comical dog!" said the landlord. "Rum fellow !" said the coachman. "That's a queer one!" said the guard. "Odious brute!" said Mrs. Prim." Ac very unmannerly sort of a gentleman, that I must say!" said Smooth-face. "Ha! ha! ha!" said the rest of the company, as the object of their notice vanished round a corner.

Notwithstanding the entertainment afforded by this whimsical personage, my spirits were down-down as low as a school-boy's upon Black Monday, when he takes his last kiss and basket of sweet-meats from mamma early in the morning. Neither did the possibility occur to me, of raising them by the mechanical process of eating. In truth, I had already eaten (as a Greek would say) so much of my own heart, and drunk so many inward tears, that ambrosia and nectar, served by Hebe herself in a platter and cup of Vulcanian workmanship, would have saluted my nostrils with perfect impunity. In beaten English, I was neither an-hungry nor a-thirst; and accordingly, instead of accompanying the other passengers to the inn, I took a stroll through the town as. comparative solitude to their dinnertable. As I walked along, intently meditating upon the sunbeams in the kennel, a gig drove furiously past, delved into the middle of the mire which was the object of my gaze if not of my veneration, and covered me, before I had an opportunity to decline the investment, from top t