A Siddons only could have invested the last scene in which Katharine appears, with the intense interest which she threw round it. Full as it is of Shakspeare's finest touches of tenderness and pathos, and deep as are the emotions which it excites in the reading, it requires extraordinary powers in the actress to make its quiet sorrow reach the hearts of an audience. Mrs. Siddons wrung them to the quick; and silent tears shed in sympathy for a sick and dying queen killed by afflictions too Capucius. The king grieves much for your weakness, and by me And heartily entreats you take good comfort. Kath. Oh my good lord, that comfort comes too late; "Tis like a pardon after execution : That gentle physic given in time, had cured me; But now, I am past all comforts here, but prayers. Cap. Madam, in good health. Kath. So may he ever do! and ever flourish When I shall dwell with worms, and my poor name I caused you write, yet sent away? Patience. No, madam. (Giving it to Katharine.) Kath. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver this to my lord the king. Kath. In which I have commended to his goodness All the yet lingering affections of the unjustly deserted wife, and all the natural yearnings of the mother's heart for the child she was about to leave, were distressingly true to nature in Mrs. Siddons's delivery of these lines. And here let us digress for an instant to remark, that never, in our time, was the tragedy of Henry VIII. so nobly represented as when Mrs. Siddons played Queen Katharine, John Kemble, Cardinal Wolsey, and Pope, the bluff tyrant. We have heard of persons who never said but one good thing in their lives; and single-speech Hamilton every body has heard of. Now Pope, who is still living (though we are informed he himself thinks it time he were dead, since he can no longer enjoy turtle or venison), and who as an actor could never have pleased the "judicious few," even in his best days, was absolutely as great in this one character, as Kemble was in Wolsey, or Mrs. Siddons in Ka tharine. His "ah, ha!" was Harry the wife-killer all over; and his whole deportment the very fac simile of what history and Shakspeare have transmitted to us of that royal beast. We should extend this paper far beyond what our limits will allow, were we to attempt a separate analysis of the principal characters performed by Mrs. Siddons during the long period in which she filled the throne of tragedy, and in which, since she resigned it, no one has succeeded her. Neither is it our intention to write her life; though an ably-written biography of her, with such collateral matter as would naturally be included, might be made eminently interesting as a dramatic and theatrical record of the last half-century. Our object has simply been to offer a sincere, however inadequate, tribute to her memory, by expressing our sentiments of her unrivalled talents; and those sentiments, whatever other faults they may exhibit, cannot be charged with sinister partiality, since they flow from one who never had the honour of Mrs. Siddons's acquaintance, and are declared at a time when they can be of no value to herself. Among the innumerable testimonies of public admiration which she received, there were not any, we should think, which she would value more highly than the unprecedented one that was bestowed by the members of one of our Inns of Court-we believe Lincoln's Inn. This was a splendid silver vase (if we remember rightly), bearing an inscription which testified that they, the donors, had derived from her acting finer examples of elocution, of graceful, impassioned, and dignified eloquence, than from all the didactic treatises on oratory, or any living model. The late Lord Erskine was then at the bar, and his name appears among those who made this tributary offering to her genius. It may be supposed that an individual so eminently gifted in the requisites for imbodying the creations of Shakspeare's pen, would be every way qualified to do equal justice to the conceptions of a poet inferior only to Shakspeare. We allude to her Miltonic Readings, consisting of the finest passages from Paradise Lost. We chanced to be in Edinburgh about the year 1805, when Mrs. Siddons gave a course of those readings there, after having previously given them in London. We hope we need not say we attended them; or add, that we were delighted, in common with all who like ourselves had the opportunity of hearing her. But we have adverted to this affair for the sake of introducing a singularly interesting circumstance relating to Mrs. Siddons, connected with the no less singular and melancholy history of a man of genius. Few of our readers, probably, have ever heard of a work published nearly thirty years ago, entitled An Address to the lately-formed Society of the friends of the People; by John Wilde, Esq., Advocate, &c. It is a work full of eloquence, imagination, fire, pathos, reasoning, learning, wisdom; embracing a comprehensive sphere of inquiry, and that inquiry conducted with ability and strength. It has some passages eminently beautiful; some characters most felicitously drawn; and some delineations vivid and impressive. The language occasionally rises to sublimity; is very often grand; and never otherwise than fluent and energetic. It shows in every page a mind well stored; and, what is infinitely better, it shows a mind sincere, bold, independent. The reader, from the first paragraph, delivers himself unresistingly into the hands of his author; he never disputes his magic sway; he bends to it, and owns, with a pleasing ecstacy of mind, the power that subdues him. It is such a production, indeed, as may stand the test of a comparison with Burke's mighty handling of the French Revolution; and Burke himself was one of those who gave the tribute of his applause to the genius of Wilde. We will now say a few words of the author. He was the son of a tradesman in Edinburgh, and at an early age betrayed marks of a powerful mind. A suitable education was therefore provided for him. The bar, in Edinburgh, is the principal avenue to fame and wealth for those who, like Wilde, have to acquire both. Accordingly he qualified himself for becoming an advocate, a professional character of high respectability in the Northern Athens, and often assumed as such without any intention of engaging in the duties it implies. We have never heard with what success Wilde practised, or whether he ever practised at all; but we have been told his lectures on civil law in the university were admirable; his views grand and comprehensive, and the language in which they were conveyed nervous and elegant. It was while he was giving these lectures that he published his "Address," and when he had barely attained his five-and-twentieth year. This man thus gifted-thus entering upon a career of brilliant renown-we have met again and again, in the streets of Edinburgh and in the neighbouring walks-a maniac! We have seen him prowling about in by-paths and unfrequented roads, forlorn, despised, neglected; scoffed at by the vulgar-stared at with the foolish gaze of wonderlaughed at by the unfeeling. The cause most generally assigned for the awful visitation was, that he engaged in a course of laborious study, night and day, to prepare himself for his collegiate lecture, at the time he was employing an active and dangerous medicine. The first symptoms were perceived one morning during his lecture: he broke suddenly off, and bade the pupils come and warm themselves, for it was a very cold morning. But whatever the cause, the effect was equally deplorable; and the more deplorable when we reflect on what a mind the awful ravage had been committed. Towards the conclusion of his Dedication of the "Address" to his friend W. Carlyle, Esq., the following passage occurs: "Indeed both you and I, in the discording harmony of our natures, could still pass through the same enchantments, and be raised to the same ravish ing delights, as in those days when Mrs. Siddons (for which our eternal gratitude is her due), sublimed our souls to that reach of felicity of which the memory might, in after-life, drive away (while itself remained), all possible human pain and sorrow." Now it was most remarkable, that whenever Mrs. Siddons played in Edinburgh, Wilde never failed to attend the theatre. We, ourselves, twice witnessed his presence, and we observed him closely. The moment Mrs. Siddons appeared on the stage his eyes were rivetted upon her, but seemingly without any consciousness of what she said; for in her most pathetic parts, a vacant smile would diffuse itself over his countenance. The moment she quitted the stage he paid no attention to the other actors, but gazed wildly round upon the audience, or hung his head upon his bosom; from which posture he would start suddenly at the first sound of Mrs. Siddons's voice. It is difficult to account for this mixture of consciousness and insensibility; of reason and insanity. There was evidently the former when he roused from his reverie at her voice, when he fixed his eyes immovably upon her, and turned them away from the other actors when she left the stage; and there was as evidently the latter when he showed that he did not participate in any thing she uttered, from the inflexibility of his features, and the unmeaning smile. We shall conclude this paper with a little theatrical relic, curiously connected with the object of it. A Worcester play-bill of February 12, 1767, when Mr. Roger Kemble, father of Mrs. Siddons, was the manager of the theatre there (or rather of the company who were playing at the King's Head, for theatre there was none), contains the following announcements: "The play, King Charles I. James, Duke of Richmond, Mr. Siddons; Fairfax, Mr. Kemble; James, Duke of York, Master John Kemble; the Duke of Gloucester, Miss F. Kemble; the Young Princess, by Miss Kemble (afterwards Mrs. Siddons); and Lady Fairfax, by Mrs. Kemble. Singing between the acts by Mrs. Fowler and Miss Kemble." In April following, Master John Kemble is announced as Phillida, in King Arthur; and Ariel, in the Tempest, was played by Miss Kemble. It will be seen that Mr. Siddons was one of the company belonging to the father of his future wife, and when Miss Kemble married him, against her father's consent, he said to her "Well, my dear child, I made you promise never to marry a performer, and you have not disobeyed me; for the devil himself could not make an actor of your husband." Mr. Siddons died at Bath, in 1808. D. D'ISRAELI'S COMMENTARIES ON THE LIFE AND MR. D'ISRAELI'S Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., if they do not display far-reaching thought, profound philosophy, or consummate judgment, if they are put together after the desultory fashion usual with this author, and are further perplexed by the extravagant affectation, distortion, and transposition characteristic of his style, are nevertheless a very creditable performance. They are composed in the spirit we love, inasmuch as they aim at discovering truth, uncoloured, undisguised by the tints or the mists of party. The author professes to discard the character of a partisan with respect to past times. He regards Charles neither sa a martyr nor as a tyrant, but as a man, the sport of circum stances, with human virtues and frailties, undiscriminating in his judgment of men, and without power of intellect commensurate to the energy of his character; deficiencies for which unluckily in difficult times, no other qualities can compensate. He paints him as meeting his first parliament with a youthful glow of generous feeling, eager to assemble another when provoked to a dissolution by the attack upon Buckingham, slowly and reluctantly admitting the conviction of invincible parliamentary alienation, deeply regretting it, and wistfully anticipating a reconciliation; as governing well during his long inter-parliamentary state, levying ship-money from necessity, with a firm belief of his right so to do, applying it scrupulously to its destined purpose, and husbanding it with Elizabethan economy. Now with all our innate loyalty and our equally innate antipathy to the sour, puritanical temper of the men, to whose anti-royalism we nevertheless acknow ledge that England is very much indebted for the blessings she enjoys in a free and constitutional government, this is something further than we can go along with him. That Charles wished to administer well and kindly the absolute power to which he aspired, and was consequently no tyrant, we have little doubt: and as little, that he would have preferred enjoying it, like Elizabeth, by the submission of parliament, and thus obtaining the supplies requisite to give England European importance, aud to recover the palatinate for his widowed sister and her children. Moreover, that his great need of money, and the difficulty he had experienced in levying what he deemed his incontestable right, made him wish, that a tractable parliament could be had, we think probable; but this is the utmost longing for parliaments, of which we can discover or imagine a trace in Charles. Neither can we accept as complete D'Israeli's vindication of the king's final desertion of Strafford-which he rests upon the importunity of those around him, and upon fears, not for himself-whether for the royal family or the kingdom is unexplained. But such weakness, after Charles had perhaps involved Strafford (whose merits or demerits as a minister have nothing to do with the question) in the peril, by pledging himself that " as King of England he was able to protect his minister, and whatever danger might happen, not a hair of his (Strafford's) head should be touched;" after he had certainly augmented the peril by his injudicious interference, was a dereliction of duty as a king and a man, neither to be palliated by importunity-even had that importunity been unanimous, which it was not, since the worthy Juxon opposed the signing the commission,* and Archbishop Usher, in tears, prayed the king might not suffer from a wounded conscience for signing it-nor to be excused by fears of consequences to himself, his family, or we could almost say to the kingdom. We think D'Israeli more successful in refuting the charge brought by friends and foes against this unhappy king of a slavish uxorious subserviency to the will of Henrietta Maria. That Charles's attachment to his young, beautiful, and vivacious queen had a tone of passion which lasted longer than passion usually endures in wedded life, our author does not dispute. But this surely can be no ground of obloquy in the estimation of even the fiercest champion of marital supremacy-Milton himself, the sternest as the mightiest of them, though he says, God's universal law Gave to the man despotic power Smile she, or lower, has demonstrated, in his exquisite portraiture of our first parents in their blissful state, that he considers such "despotic power" to be perfectly compatible with the most impassioned love. D'Israeli has well observed, that although Clarendon, "who appears irritably jealous of female influence," speaks of "the queen's absolute power over the king, proved in the removal of great ministers," he in another place contradicts this allegation by his statement that "neither the Arch * Whether Charles signed a warrant for Strafford's execution, or a commission to others to anthorize the deed, cannot make a shade of difference in the king's sanction of his minister and victim's death. bishop (Laud) nor the Earl of Strafford were in any degree acceptable to the queen." Our commentator proceeds: How then happened it that Charles, so entirely passive to "the absolute power" of his wife, never removed these "great ministers ?" Even the most subtle reasoners unreason themselves on this popular prejudice of the queen's influence over Charles I. Mr. Godwin writes, "The queen applied all the vast influence she had hitherto exercised over her husband to prevail on him to agree to the establishment of the Presbyterian form of church government." Doubtless to her, between two heretics, the choice was indifferent. But what was the result of this " vast influence?" Charles never would concede the point; for not many pages after, Mr. Godwin tells us, "The whole project of the Presbyterians was defeated by the unexpected pertinacity of the king." Such was the queen's vast influence!"' Henrietta Maria herself appears to have entertained, or at least expressed, proper Miltonian notions of wife-like obedience, from an anecdote taken by D'Israeli from Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish, appended to a sermon preached at the funeral of William, Duke of Devonshire, by Bishop Kennet. When a deputation of ladies presented a petition to her, requesting her to take some political step that would have delayed her on her journey to rejoin the king, she replied," Ladies, affairs of this nature are not in our sphere. I am commanded by the king to make all the haste I can. You will receive this advantage at least by my answer, that if I cannot grant your petition, you may learn from my example to obey your husbands." As the received opinion is that Henrietta Maria repaid Charles's warm affection with indifference, and cherished a criminal attachment for her favourite Jermyn, whom she is supposed to have married after the king's death, we must extract d'Israeli's account of her deep sensibility to that dreadful event, and of the source whence he draws it. It is given by an eye-witness, with great simplicity of detail, the Père Gamache, one of the capuchins who had waited on the Queen of England, and from whose MS. I have drawn some interesting matters in my former volumes. * "The Count of St. Alban's (Jermyn) after many evasions and many ambiguous words to prepare her little by little to receive the fatal intelligence of the king's execution, at length declared it to the queen, who seemed not to have expected any thing of the kind. She was so deeply struck, that instantly, entirely speechless, she remained voiceless and motionless, to all appearance a statue. A great philosopher has said that ordinary griefs allow the heart to sigh and the lips to murmur, but that extraordinary afflictions, terrible and fatal, cast the soul into a stupor, make the tongue mute, and take away the senses.-Curæ leves loquuntur, graves stupent. To this pitiable state was the queen reduced, and to all our exhortations and arguments she was deaf and insensible. We were obliged to cease talking, and we remained by her, in broken silence, some weeping, some sighing, and all with sympathizing countenances, mourning over her extreme grief. This sad scene lasted till nightfall, when the Duchess of Vendome, whom she greatly loved, came to see her. Weeping she took the hand of the queen, tenderly kissing itand afterwards spoke so successfully, that she seemed to have recovered this desolated princess from that loss of all her senses, or rather that great and sudden stupor, produced by the surprising and lamentable intelligence of the strange death of the king." We pass over Mr. D'Israeli's eulogies of James I., Buckingham, &c. &c., and proceed to his investigation of the private motives which may at least have inflamed the zeal for liberty in those leaders of the anti-monarchical party, whom the Whigs, seduced we hope and believe by their high appreciation of the good effect resulting to this country from the civil wars of the seventeenth century, have decorated with all the honours of pure patriotism. Here again our author goes further than we can accompany him. Assuredly we never were enthusiastic admirers of the factiously fanatical Prynne, Pym, &c. &c., nor could we ever see much reason for charitably attributing their ill-natured absurdities, their fraudulent modes of exciting the people, and other artifices, solely to mistaken bigotry, whilst we observed the cordial co-operation of the strait-laced puritan * Is this a misprint? Or is it Mr. d'Israeli's pleasure to use heretics for heresies? |