all self-possession, and she is obliged to warn him : "If, Tasso, I must longer grant thee audience, Then moderate this fervour, which affrights me." This hint, however intelligible, is lost on the poet, whose conduct becomes quite ungovernable; his enthusiasm waxes into frenzy, and, at the close of a transcendental speech, he attempts to clasp the princess in his arms. She, of course, repulses this outrage with indignation, and makes her escape. Meanwhile, Leonora Sanvitale, who has been visibly watching in the background, crosses the stage, and, with an outcry of amazement, hastens after the princess. The duke and Antonio also came forward, and the former, perceiving Tasso about to follow the ladies, exclaims, "Hold him fast, he raves!" and the madman finally is left in custody of his former antagonist, Antonio, the state-secretary. On this catastrophe we shall make little or no comment. It will seem odd enough, no doubt, but it is Goethe's; and the drama, as already mentioned, is a "psychological curiosity." We shall, however, translate the last scene, though we must enter our protest against being required or expected to give a literal version. "Ant. If from the number of thine enemies Of whom thou dream'st, one stood beside thee now, How would he triumph! This, indeed, was monstrous, So wholly unexampled, that our thoughts Are staggered in their course, and words are wanting To express our feelings. Tasso (after a long pause). Hah! fulfil thine office! I know thee well. Thou meritest, indeed, The prince's confidence. I am degraded ; My staff is broken,- so fulfil thy duty, And by slow tortures work my martyrdom. The barbed arrow has already struck; Thou needst but pluck the shaft, and I shall feel The poisonous arrow at my heart. Already Thou wert the despot's gaoler. Now, in turn, Be thou his executioner-tormentor. How well these offices do both become thee! (Turning to the side-scenes.) Depart, then, tyrant! Thou couldst not retain The mask for ever, and thou art triumphant. Thy slave is chained at last; the kindness shewn Was but to save him for elaborate torture. Go, then, and bear with thee the stern abhorrence, The malediction from my heart extorted By such abuse of proud supremacy! Thus, like a base-born mendicant, at last, Have I been outlawed and denounced. For this With laurel-wreathes was I adorned and flattered Only before a tyrant's throne to fall The book wherein consisted all my fortune, That might elsewhere have been mine introduction My shield 'gainst famine and neglect. Now, too, I do perceive why I was kindly weaned From solitude and study. There was black Conspiracy, and thou art at its head. My name no further should be spread abroad, But sink ere long to dark oblivion. Thou syren, too, thou Circe, who with And tones angelic lured me on.—at once I see and know thee! Wherefore did, alas! That knowledge come so late? But in this life I hear not, and shall never hear! Wer't possible, I would but say farewell,-only farewell! Restore me to their presence but a moment! Perhaps I shall recover! No, 'tis vain! I am denounc'd and banished,— have contrived Mine own destruction; never more shall hear That voice melodious, or behold her smile! Ant. Hear, then, the voice of one who not unmoved Contemplates thy distress. Thou art not yet So lost and miserable as thou deem'st. Tasso. And am I so deeply fallen, Leaving a heap of ruins, whence no frag ment Of intellect, once powerful, can be drawn For my support and guidance? Is all fervour Quenched and extinguished in this heart? Aye, truly, The world surrounds me, but I am no more! The soul's identity is lost! Thou liv'st. Then summon fortitude, and learn To know thyself even as thou art. For such admonishment. In lore historic Might I not find again some proud example, Some hero that had suffered more than I, And with his fate compare mine own,— thus gaining The fortitude that I have lost? But no,'Tis vain and hopeless all. If man's affliction Exceeds endurance, Nature has provided One only solace-tears to lamentation. Yet to the POET, in his grief is given The power to weave into melodious numbers His fiercest of emotious, and this power Has Heaven vouchsafed me." With an expression of friendly interest and compassion, Antonio here takes him by the hand, and Tasso re suines. "In thy wisdom thou Stand'st like the rock, so firmly and exalted, Whilst I am like the wave by tempests driven ! But of thy strength be not too proud. Arena laws With both arms, thus, as to the rugged cliff, Whereon his vessel struck, the mariner At last cleaves for protection!" Such is the conclusion of Goethe's Tasso, a production in which there are many beautiful and poetic passages, with much knowledge of human nature in general, and of the workings of the mind under peculiar impressions. The characters and conversation of the two Leonoras are, we believe, looked on by Goethe's admirers in Germany as being more successful than his delineations of Tasso's eccentricity; and we somewhat regret not having extracted a celebrated dialogue betwixt the princess and her confidante, in act third; but it extends to twenty pages. Besides, owing to leading characteristics of the style, this drama presents a very difficult task to the translator; and, in order to judge fairly of the author's innate power, we must either recollect or try to imagine the influence of the times in which he wrote. With a view to afford the strongest possible contrast to productions of the French school, Lessing, Gerstenberg, and Klinger (as we had occasion to remark in page 69), wrote their tragedies in prose. Goethe and Schiller at the outset adopted this plan, which they both afterwards abandoned. But resisting the rules and example of Voltaire and his followers, they naturally enough ran into a contrary extreme, and, even in their versified imitations of the dialogues of real life, admitted ideas as well as expressions hardly reconcilable to that modification of life VOL. XIII. NO. LXXVII. and its emotions which is suited to the purposes of poetry. Hence some of the best part of Goethe's Tasso-even the dialogue between the two ladies in act third—would, if faithfully rendered, sound not a little strange in the ears of an English reader. But the volume before us bears date 1790; Tasso was written several years earlier; and what a revolution has taken place in literary taste, and every other taste, since then! Those were the days in which fashions of all sorts, extrinsic or intrinsic, relating either to mind or body, were preeminently absurd. Even the very trees of our pleasure-grounds were still cut into fantastic shapes; our forestwalks and carriage-drives must either be rectilinear, or, according to bold innovators, serpentine, both being equally at variance with nature, which was every where scouted. Those were the times when a fashionable friseur always consumed a whole hour, but oftener two or three hours, in a single performance on one female head, which required an elaborate foundation of cushions, pins, and wire-work, before arriving at the completion of its adornment in a superstructure of multitudinous curls, impregnated and plastered with hard pomatum, poudre blanche, and poudre à la Mareschalle; when, also, it was indispensably requisite that men should dress for dinner in silk stockings and short tights, with diamond kneebuckles. Moreover, these were the times when Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Mrs. Annabella Seward, and Wm. Hayley, Esq., were in this country looked upon as eminent poets. No wonder, if in his eagerness to avoid participation in their excellencies or infringement on their territory, Wordsworth, as soon as he was old enough to judge for himself, should have run into a contrary extreme of taste, or that Goethe (mutatis mutandis) should, under similar impressions, have done the same thing thirty years earlier in Germany! In those days people were led to believe that the fields of literature were exhausted that certain pre-eminent and favoured individuals had caught up every natural flower that was worthy of notice had ploughed, trenched, and manured every acre in such manner, that though others might, by imitation of their precursors, raise similar crops, yet nothing better, and nothing new, could be expected, or was possible. Nor was this all. These illustrious literati had not merely attained such excellence as could not be surpassed, though it might humbly be imitated, but had so completely eclipsed their predecessors, that, with the exception of certain worshipful personages called classics, who wrote long ago in Greek and Latin, the past was to be considered a mere blank. Old baronial times and old chivalrous notions were in disrepute so were old ballads, and old English (or German) books of all kinds. We have seen a sale-catalogue of the year 1789, in which those gems of our early literature, afterwards so eagerly sought after, were offered at one fortieth part of that price which in 1812 would have been considered quite moderate! The old dramatic writers in this country-all except Shakespeare-were neglected; and it was only his superlative genius that kept their names from oblivion, because they had been his contemporaries. In Germany, matters were far worse than in England; for there, as in Sweden, endeavours had repeatedly been made even to abolish the language of the country, and introduce French or Latin in its stead! A revolution was inevitable; and, as usual in such cases, it needed only the example of one powerful individual, like Lessing or Gerstenberg, to disseminate the principles of an entirely new system; but we doubt whether Goethe would have obtained such rapid eminence, had it not been for the more immediate example of his friend Klinger, whose singular productions, like hundreds of other veins in the German mine, remain up to the present hour unnoticed and unknown in this country. Considering the unsettled state of the poetical world sixty years ago, it was to be expected that various odd experiments would be tried; and during more than two acts of Tasso, Goethe's plan seems to have been to give an adaptation of the ordinary and unimpassioned language of well-educated persons in daily life, precisely as Wordsworth has done in various portions of his Excursion. Hence, the difference of tone betwixt this remarkable sketch, and those productions of modern German dramatists, extracts from which were some years ago liberally given, under the title of "Horæ Germanicæ," in Blackwood, and where, for the most part, both thoughts and elaborate. The fields of literature-or, to speak without metaphor, the modifications of the poetic art, whether it employs the medium of prose or verse -are indeed inexhaustible. Supposing a genius like that of Goethe to commence working at the present era, either here or in Germany, and to choose the same subjects, with how strongly marked shades of difference would in all probability those identical materials be treated! Yet a few words more on the subject of the German prose tragedies. By proper adaptation, some of them, which have hitherto been neglected, might prove very acceptable on the English stage. Why the Robbers should never have been thought of in this light we know not,- for the objectionable traits and passages are by no means essential to the plot; and certainly it has characteristics superior to those of Pizarro and the Stranger, by the former of which Sheridan gained so much reputation and profit. But much depends on the skill of the adapter. And, generally speaking, though the public professes an exceeding admiration or approbation of Italian and French, and we have a tolerable command of books in both, yet against German it entertains a notable prejudice; moreover, we have absolutely no dictionary of this language printed in England that is good enough for the purposes even ofelementary instruction. The" public at large" has got a notion that it is abominably guttural, though it is not more so than Spanish, and insufferably harsh, though it is melodious compared with Italian, as spoken by natives in many districts. Then it is (or used to be) decided that the literature is made up principally of unintelligible metaphysics, untranslateable poetry, stupid ghost stories, and romances far too wild and transcendental for ordinary comprehension. How remote all this is from the truth we need not at present take time to explain, more especially as the mist of prejudice and ignorance already of itself begins to clear away. En passant, and in conclusion, we shall only observe, that the best prose tragedies of German authors ought, in our opinion, to be rendered by an English translator into blank verse. The language of passion is naturally elevated, and in this form acquires additional clearness and force. notice Reinhold's versified edition of Schiller's Fiesco, from which specimens were long ago given in Blackwood. Not a single thought is substantially changed, but only moulded into that style of expression which Schiller himself would have adopted had he begun the subject fifteen years later, and which he has so admirably exemplified in his Don Carlos, Mary Stewart, Wilhelm Tell, and Wallenstein. ON COURTS-MARTIAL AND THE CAT-O'-NINE-TAILS. "I NEVER forgive a first fault, and 66 Severity in the commencement is lenity in the end," quoth the sergeantmajor. So long as England was threatened with a foreign enemy, the discussion of the corporal-punishment question was confined almost exclusively to the members of the military and naval fessions, who were permitted by the propublic, in dangerous times, to be the sole judges of the best means of rendering the men who served under them the fittest instruments for the duties they were to perform—while the bright halo of victory shone round the warriors' brows, it was never asked how so many of our free-born brother-subjects fared-provided the British bayonet turned the tide of conquest in every battle-field, none asked whether he was flogged, or how he was fed. But a new era has come upon us. Twenty years of peace have closed our eyes to the prospect of any other war, and opened them to the condition, or rather the supposed condition, of the British soldier and sailor; and as philanthropy is the order of the day with those who were blind to the past, yet who often fancy they perceive more than actually exists in the present, its microscopic powers are further added to augment the already too exaggerating sight of a large class of the public. Taking it for granted that of, or connected with, government rebranch every quires reform, and that none educated in a particular calling are capacitated for giving a correct opinion thereon, officers of the navy and army are no longer held by these persons capable of judging how the band of discipline is to be bound, but that they themselves -these self-constituted judges-are, by intuition, fully competent, in their rough, untutored strength of intellect, to decide whether the soldier is better coerced by moral or physical punishments-by withholding honours from him, or by treating him to the cat and the treadmill. The extreme in either case is bad. Half a century ago, none thought of the soldier's toil, nor of his remuneration; none out of the warlike professions seemed to think it worth while inquiring how the machine, that kept the enemies of the country at a distance from aris et focis, was worked, provided it answered its purpose; and men in the ranks might have been sentenced by scores to the cat or the knout, to the dungeon or the rope, without the inquiry or sympathy of their fellowcitizens. Nous avons changé tout cela, however and, in this present day, not a cat can be flourished, nor may a barrack kitten cry mew, without the deed running its round in the daily papers, to call into action the lachrymose feelings of a pitying public. Just permit me to point out some of the abuses of former times, and to shew how from one extremity of error we are rapidly running into another. Flogging is unquestionably a detestable punishment; and, forty years ago, this detestable punishment was as certainly carried to a detestable extent. In the army, any court-martial could award a corporal punishment to any amount of lashes short of a thousand; and five, six, seven, and eight hundred, were by no means unfrequently given. Indeed, I have more than once heard it argued whether a strong man could bear more than nine hundred lashes without being taken from the halberds. The punishment, too, did not necesferings overcame his physical endursarily cease when the delinquent's sufance, and nature could bear no longer; but if the entire sentence was not carried into execution the first time he was tied up, a second, and possibly a third time, after allowing a sufficie |