HORATIO. Tush! tush! 'twill not appear. BERNARDO. Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears, HORATIO. Well, sit we down, And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. Last night of all, BERNARDO. When yon same star that's westward from the pole, MARCELLUS. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again! BERNARDO. In the same figure, like the king that's dead. MARCELLUS. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio. MARCELLUS. Speak to it, Horatio. HORATIO. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee – speak! It is offended. MARCELLUS. BERNARDO. See! it stalks away. HORATIO. Stay; speak speak, I charge thee, speak. MARCELLUS. 'Tis gone, and will not answer." Here every line is alive with action, as well as voice, to communicate in every clause fresh intelligence of the feelings of the speakers, and to bring out their individual characters; but, above all, to intimate, in the simplest manner, those awakening circumstances of the tragic story about to be developed, with the time, place, and manner of its occurrence, which are calculated to prepare the mind of the reader or spectator for the sequel. It is remarkable, that in the progress of more than forty interlocutions, involving four distinct scenes, by the change of persons, within less than fourscore lines from the opening of this play, there is no necessity for a single stage direction:-every look, attitude, and movement of the six characters (including the Ghost) being so infallibly indicated, that not the minutest particle which can give poetic or picturesque effect to the reality of the spectacle is omitted. This is the consummation of dramatic art, hiding itself behind the unveiled form of nature. The foregoing illustration is all that the limits of these Essays will allow on the subject of theatrical entertainments. Of the morality of the stage I have nothing to say, except that, in proportion as the style of dramatic composition has been purified, the talent displayed by writers, in what ought to be at once the most directly moral and constitutionally sublime species of verse, has become less and less conspicuous. Without disparagement either to virtue or genius, sufficient reasons might be assigned for such an anomaly, but this is not the fit occasion for explaining them. With a few honourable exceptions, among which may be named the tragedies of Miss Mitford and Mr. Sheridan Knowles, the efforts of our contemporaries in this field have been less successful in deserving success, than in any other walk of polite literature. I refer solely to acting plays. Mrs. Joanna Baillie, the Rev. H. Millman, the Rev. G. Croly, Messrs. Coleridge, Sotheby, and some others, have written Tragedies for the mind and the heart, which rank among the noblest productions of the age. A very different judgment must be passed on the dramas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of these, notwithstanding the treasures of poetry buried in them, have been abandoned to an obscurity as ignominious as oblivion, on account of their atrocious profligacy;-like forsaken mines, no longer worked, though their veins are rich with ore, because of the mephitic air that fouls their passages, and which no safety-lamp yet invented can render innoxious to the most intrepid virtue. It is grievous to think, that so many of the most powerful minds that ever were sent into this world to beautify and bless mankind, like morning stars with loveliest light, or vernal rains with healing influence, should have been perverted from their course into malignant luminaries, or from their purpose into sour, cold mildews, blighting and blasting the earth and its inhabitants, so far as their evil beams could strike, or their deadly drops could fall. It is true, that they represented man as he was, not as he ought to have been ;—not as he might have been-had poets always done their duty, and exhibited vice as vice, and virtue as virtue, instead of making each wear the disguise of the other; associating valour, wit, generosity, and other splendid qualities, with earthly, sensual, devilish appetites and passions: whereby the multitude, who possessed none of these brilliant endowments, were confirmed in their beloved vices; while those who were constitutionally or affectedly gallant, facetious, and affable, were induced to imagine, that, with these holiday virtues, they might indulge in the grossest propensi - ties, and hold in contempt as allied to meanness, pusillanimity, and hypocrisy whatever is pure, lovely, and of good report in woman, or meek, self-denying, self-sacrificing in man. Religious Poetry. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Waller, says: "It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verse has been too little applied to the purposes of worship; and many attempts have been made to animate devotion by pious poetry: that they have seldom obtained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to enquire why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended, if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. * * * * * * * * The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few; and being few, are universally known: but, few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than the things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts in nature which attract, and the concealment of those that repel the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly ex |