WE had composed, with infinite pleasure and no pain, a New-Year'sDay Address to our beloved friends, and were glancing over it in type, with eyes unstartled by the most extraordinary errata, when a bulky parcel, directed by the well-known hand of our much respected Mr Rees himself, was deposited by a young gentleman in black on the Board of Green Cloth, with a thud that made the ink sparkle from the mouth of the Dolphin. Our first sheet is always the last to go to press; and our manuscript had so nicely filled the measure, that, like the Thames, or any other first-rate river, the article was, "without o'erflowing, full," and we need not say so translucent, that we could have seen the silver gravel shimmering in the depth, had it not been for the reflected imagery of heaven. With a sure presentiment of the delightful, we seized our ivory paper-folder, sharp as a case knife, and cut asunder the cords that confined the treasure. Strong sunshine was at the moment streaming through the old painted glass, that usually lets in a dim religious light upon us, sitting like a saint in his sanctum, and fell upon three volumes of dramas by Joanna Baillie! We shoved the sheet aside, almost with scorn, and lifting one of them from the illumination, we pressed it to our heart, and then fell to such

perusal of its face, that our eyebeams, after dancing a while, became concentred in a focus that seemed as if it would burn a hole in the boards. Erelong that passionate fit subsided; and well pleased to know that age had not deadened our enthusiasm, in sobered mood and solemn, we set ourselves, with all our soul, to enjoy, after the lapse of so many years, a continuation of the series of Plays on the Passions. All the sense, and all the nonsense that had been so well and so ill spoken and written about the theory of the illustrious poetess, we knew had long sunk in the waters of oblivion; here was the completion of a plan which only the noblest genius could have conceived; and on laying down Volume First, which we read through, from beginning to end, at one reclination, we felt that Scott was justified in linking her name with that of Shakspeare.

Nay, do not start with supercilious brow; for Shakspeare was but a man-though of men the most wonderful-and what woman's name would you, in poetry, place above that of Joanna Baillie? What the Mighty Minstrel has said of her, let no inferior spirit gainsay; and be assured that his judgment, rightly understood, is the Truth, and has been confirmed by all the Poets. She has "worshipped at the Temple's inner shrine;" and her revela

tions are those of a Priestess, whose services and ministrations have been accepted and consecrated by the spirit of nature. Dark and dreadful revelations they often are; for they are of the mysteries of the human heart, which is the dwellingplace of sin, or by sin often haunted at noon-day, when there are no visionary spectres. Bright and beautiful they often are, too; for the human heart has its angel visitants, and then it is like the heavenly region, and its pictured delight divine.

Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such different moulds? It is, indeed, wonderfulfor the power is that of sympathy and genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living things, and whose overflowing tenderness diffuses itself over the beauty even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood-the lust of crime in a mind polluted with wickedness-the remorse of acts which could never pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For, in the act of imagination, he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings its good and gracious affectionscall up from their hidden places those elements of his nature, of which the seeds were sown in him as in all-give them unnatural magnitude and power-conceive the disorder of passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and workings of his mind in the spontaneous an in the forced sympathy, he knows and understands from himself what passes in the minds of others. What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciously, at every moment in our intercourse with one another. To this kind of

sympathy, so essential to our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart, which willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others, whose character of feeling is unlike to its own, and the freedom from any inordinate overpowering passion, which quenches in the mind the feelings of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the natural affections and happiness of other men. To paint bad passions is not to praise them: they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity them; and therefore Baillie has done so far better than Byron.

But we must not suffer ourselves to be carried away into dissertation, the sin which most easily besets us in common with all philosophical old gentlemen; for we desire now to show Specimens of true Dramatic Poetry, and we know that by doing so we shall delight our friends a thousand times more than by our very happiest criticism. This article is the first of a Series; and we love always to present ample Specimens till we have "paved our way" with gems, and then, turning round and looking back, we expatiate on the radiant road we have travelled together, till love and admiration are rekin. dled by the retrospect, and even burn in our bosoms with a brighter flame. So let us single out one Drama, and by some potent extracts show what is thej spirit of the whole, and its prevailing character; and let it be " Henriquez-a Tragedy "a tale of Jealousy, Revenge, and Remorse.

Don Henriquez is the victorious general of the King of Castile, Alonzo, surnamed the Noble ; * and Leonora, the daughter of a humble house," is his wife. During the absence of her lord, her sister Mencia has been residing in their castle, and been wooed by Don Juen, the dearest friend of Henriquez, while her heart was devoted to Antonio, a young gentleman of less exalted birth. The frequent visits of Juen have excited suspicions in the mind of Diego, the steward, of Leonora's virtue, and he drops a letter, charging her with guilt, in the way of Henriquez, on his return from the wars.