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St. Peter's question was by far more pleasant;
For though his prospect was obscured by doubt,
Yet Hope, as usual, cast a golden ray on it;
And Peter was not armed with gun or bayonet.
VII.

He boldly answered, "Holy Father! I

"Was thy devout successor, though not raised, "Like many, to the Papal dignity

"By interest or cunning; God be praised "For calling me to fill a station high

"As his, who afterwards with donkeys grazed: "You'll own my power as great as his, I hope; "I rul'd o'er Emperors,-I was a Pope."

VIII.

Then answer'd Peter," I have no objection,
"My son, to your directly ent'ring here;
"Though I must own you would be an exception
"To Popes in general; for they, I fear,
"Have, notwithstanding all my predilection
"For my successors, seldom yet come near
"To Heaven's quite impenetrable portals
"For all except the very best of mortals.

IX.

"Nor yet, for fear of doing mischief, dare I "Admit you now; although I sometimes wonder "How, day by day, my orders quickly vary,

"As quick as after lightning comes the thunder; "But, by the leave of th' holy Virgin Mary,

"Soon will I draw these rotting gates asunder; "For such a visitor as you, my son,

"They surely ought to be with speed undone."

X.

He said, he went, but soon returned in haste;
(As Cæsar hath it," Veni, vidi, vici;")
He soon returned, and Pius thus addressed,
"If it were in my power, in a trice I
"Would let you in to mingle with the blest;

"But th' holy Queen of Heaven, by whose advice I "Act, bids me say, that since you had my keys "On earth, you now may use them if you please."

XI.

Quoth he," I left them with the only Cardinal,

"Whom with th' important charge I could entrust; "And think not, Father, now that I am hard in all "My censure on the Conclave; for I must

"Needs tell you, that they are not worth a farthin' all ́ ́ "Together,-hypocrites, unclean, unjust;

"And not a Prelate lives who can at all vie "With him, my chosen favourite Gonsalvi.

XII.

X

"But as I wish not e'er to know the strange hell, "I trust my pray'er will not appear uncivil, "Begging that for the keys you'll send some angel: "Let Michael, too, protect me from the devil, "(Whose myriad imps for heretics arrange hell), "Lest he should tempt me to some deadly evil o "For there is no one can, like doughty Michael, "Dismay the Devil, and with terror strike hell." sava XIII.

Then answered Peter," Let thy will be done!

"'Twas done on earth; let it be done in heaven!

"Thou hast, I own, a glorious journey run;

"Thy years of empire more than three times seven,

"The longest reign, except my own, O son!
"To any Pope by Providence yet given.
"The fewer years a living Pope encumber,
"The greater will be his successor's number.".
XIV.

Thus having spoken, Peter blew a whistle

(As Homer would have called it, liguphthongos)
Then up did thousand thousands lances bristle,
As quickly as from marshes springs a fungus,
And sharp and close as prickles on a thistle;
Which is a better simile among us:

For church and state would soon sing in a wrong key,
Unless they each were governed by a donkey.

XV.

Quoth Peter," Gabriel! behold the vicar

"Of Christ, protector of the holy church; "Who never would allow th' unjust to pick her "Bones, nor yet ever left her in the lurch; "Kind to the orthodox, but to the kicker

"Against the pricks, administ'ring the birch "Of wholesome chastisement; far from the leopard "He kept, and sheared his flock like a good shepherd. XVI.

"But having come his wages to receive,
"The holy pastor has been disappointed;
"And now his disappointment to relieve,

"A little trip for you I have appointed;
"Go fetch the keys (to trouble you I grieve)
"From the late favourite of our anointed,
"With care deposit them within your pockets,
"And then return as swift as Congreve's rockets."
XVII.

Swift as the twop'nny postboy on his pony,

With rowels goading, and with lash unfurled, Swift as the veteran, whose oldest crony

Is ready now to quit him and the world, Unmindful of the storm, and of the stony

Road, gallops onward, swift as arrow hurled
From nervous hand into the trembling throng,
Or swift as sarcasms from Brougham's tongue;
XVIII.

So swift, or swifter far than these, than all,
Th' obedient angel to the globe descended;
Not apprehending ignominious fall,

Which aeronauts of late have apprehended,
When the supply of gas hath been too small,

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And all their puffs in wind and smoke have ended: Though stale these tricks, still hast thou art to play'em, O, money-getting, gas-devouring Graham!

XIX.

How oft has thou proclaimed thy vast intentions
To navigate the air in a balloon

Of monstrous supernatural dimensions,

And thou hast struggled; but to earth how soonHave fallen thy machine and thy pretensions, Instead of visiting th' astonished moon!

Through town thy name has been so oft placarded, Take care that some day thou art not blackguarded.

XX.

The angel from Olympus flew away,

And quickly reached the heights of hallowed Rome; Cheating the tedium of his airy way

By musing on her melancholy doom;

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XXII.

"My secretary has them, he at least

"Will give them to you. The angel being gone, "The worthy prelate spoke within his breast:

"O may the scarlet dame from Babylon "Ride on St. Peter for a stupid beast!"

(He crost himself devoutly and went

"For his stupidity, I'm sure it right were

"E'en should she plague him riding like the night-mare."
XXIII.

Then calling on the noble secretary

(Th' angelic horses now began to foam)
The messenger's informed by all the merry/
Attendants, that their master's not at home.
"You had far better back to Heaven carry

"Your message," added they; nor idly roam
"After our lord, för far beyond your reach he
“Is, having run off with a danzatrice."

XXIV.

The unsuccessful messenger returned,

And to his kind employ'r in language terse
Related all the news that he had learned,

Which made the Pope's condition far far worse
From Heaven's portals was he forthwith spurned
(As are the poor throughout the universe)
And Peter took the hint, growing as cross with all,
As are the porters at the door of th' hospital.
XXV.

The story now before you seemed so short to us

At first, we thought we ne'er could make it long;
(Although well versed in ways direct and tortuous)
And if the sarcasms appear too strong,

It will in you, Oreader! be but courteous,
To think of what I thought of all along:
For when I try to imitate Lord BYRON, I
Cannot refrain from satire or from irony.

CARLO.

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LONDON:Published by HENRY L. HUNT, 38, Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, and 22, Old Bond-street. Price Fourpence; or, if stamped for country circulation free of postage, Sevenpence. Sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town; and by the following Agents in the country:

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Bath, at the London Newspaper Office.
Bristol, Hillyard and Morgan.

Sunderland, W. Chalk, High-street. A
Dundee, T. Donaldson.

Norwich, Burks and Kinnebrook, Mer-
cary Office.

Yarmouth, W. Meggy.
*

Leicester, T. Thompson.

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THE

LITERARY EXAMINER.

No. XVII.-SATURDAY, OCT. 25, 1823.

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Fulvius Valens, or the Martyr of Casarea, a Tragedy.
Adrastus, a Tragedy. By R. C. Dallas.

AN able writer in the London Magazine has penetrated, with considerable spirit, into the causes of the general failure in modern attempts at tragedy. His theory is simple, and he illustrates it with ability. The essence of tragedy, he maintains, is action, and that no merit of any other kind can atone for either its languor or its absence. We entirely agree with him, and attribute the modern predilection for the melodrama entirely to this cause. The play-going public do not attend to hear poetry recited, but to witness something done; and are more gratified even with extravaganza and dumb show, ungraced with lofty and poetical expression, than with a languid succession of pictorial and descriptive dialogue, which appeals to the fancy or the understanding, but never to the senses or to the heart. We even go farther than the writer to whom we have alluded; for we not only deem action the great requisite, but that it must be action essentially and specially active, a remark that brings us at once to the first of the dramas, the title of which heads this article. A short descant upon the Dramatis Persone and plot will fully illustrate our meaning.

Fulvius Valens, a noble Roman, and an aged and devoted Christian proselyte of Caesarea, under the government of Claudius Herminianus, has a son and a daughter, who are attached and partly betrothed to the nephew and the niece (also a brother and a sister) of the Governor. At the time the drama opens, Herminianus has received orders from Rome to suppress the Christian faith, and in consequence will not listen to the pleadings of his nephew and niece, but resolves to force the latter to marry a Cornelius Afer, who is struck to the earth by Marcus, the disappointed bridegroom. The distress and interest of the piece is created by the Christian resolution of Fulvius and his family, who withstand pardon and every sort of temptation rather than give up Christianity.

Now, it is easy to see that much pathetic incident, and lofty and heroic bearing, may be mixed up with a story of religious self-devotion; but yet do we maintain, that no such story on a Christian basis can be rendered dramatically interesting. The men and women of the drama are to be the victims of the passions, not their masters; and

VOL. 1.

17

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from the moment we discover that they are so, dramatic interest is Pat an end. In a word, we feel the natural, but only admire the superinduced; a fact, which leads to another discovery, that all conventional feelings are very secondarily dramatic, meaning those which are national, sectarian, or the joint and equal property of multitudes. All these notions clog individualization, and it was by rendering them so subservient, when he made use of them, that Shakespeare distinguishes himself from all other dramatists. By attending to the Romans of Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar, as compared with those of the Catiline and Sejanus of Ben Jonson, the nature of the distinction will be obvious. The first are men as well as Romans, the others Romans alone. There is a dramatic defect, therefore, in the plot of Fulvius Valens, which is not to be got over; he is a beau-ideal Christian, but scarcely a man; and the very principle of his heroism is to endure, not to act. With the single exception of the assassination, a momentary incident, the play is a mere tissue of suffering and resignation from beginning to end, described in terse and elegant blank verse indeed, but no otherwise a play than the thousand-and-one of the gentlemanly, scholastic, and sometimes very poetical productions, which, under the name of Tragedies, have preceded it.gea sawa yuushra en qol We have been led to notice this tragic attempt the more particularly, in consequence of an address by the author, in which we are informed that it was rejected at one of the Winter Theatres, notwithstanding the is expressed approbation of Mr. Kean. We cannot enter on the grounds of the opinion formed by the latter, as it is not given; but, with a sinblicere respect for the evident talent of the author, we are entirely with the Management in their decision against it as an acting play.

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* The Adrastus of Mr. Dallas is borrowed from the Adventures of the Joyoung Phrygian Prince of that name, at the Court of Croesus, King of Lydia, as related in the first book of Herodotus. Adrastus, after unwarily slaying his own brother, is forced by the destiny of the ancients 6. to fulfil an ominous dream of the hitherto prosperous King of Lydia, by accidentally spearing his son Atys in the chase. We are not quite Of sure that the shadowy traditions of a very remote antiquity form the Jbest sort of materials for the excitement of modern sympathy; but we Jare certain that if the main incidents are produced in the fulfilment of dreams, that such is not the case. In point of fact, there is no dramaHetic interest in this piece from beginning to end, although pleasingly written. The hero, having unwittingly killed a brother, is in a state of Jodecent sorrow during the whole play, and after putting an “end a to another young prince by accident, he kills himself at last, as in duty bound. There is an addition of perplexity to be sure, because the wife of his friend, the latter prince, is in love with him; and failing to inspire him with a mutual passion, she adopts the novel expedient of accusing him of a similar attempt upon herself: but all this e ends in nothing, and neither advances nor retards the catastrophe. As usual, the versification is fair, and the diction occasionally eloquent and 7 poetical: but of distinctive character, or soul-exciting incident, there is none; although written, as Mr. Dallas informs us, in consequence of Te the general complaint of the dearth of modern Tragedy, and apparently nd with some latent expectation of supplying the deficiency. The author a bellso ei 1sily read el-biens aid to rosido ent bas „gr

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