tuation may be horrible, if a man can bring his mind to dwell upon a fiction at once so monstrous and so vulgar; and this Mr. Lamb has done, till he has ventured to express his admiration in an allusion far too awful there to have been used, or here to be repeated. That which immediately follows will however display the force with which his criticisms are, conceived, and the beauty of language with which they are embodied.

"Marlowe is said to have been taint

ed with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such a genius the History of Faustus must have been delectable food : to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the Tree of Knowledge. Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the Conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it blameable to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice in upon the stage speaking her own dialect, and, themselves being armed with an Unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury of the atheist ever furnished: and the precise strait laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of libertinism

sufficient to have invented."

The Duchess of Malfy is one of those plays which Mr. Lamb admires most warmly, yet surely it contains nothing half so fine as the praise which he has misbestowed upon it.

"All the several parts of the dread. ful apparatus with which the Duchess's death is ushered in are not more remote

from the conceptions of ordinary venge. ance, than the strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon of ordinary poets. As they are not like their victim, is beyond the imagination inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. What are Luke's iron crown,'

the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes bed, to the waxed images which coun terfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bell-man, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit: this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may upon horror's head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they 'terrify babes with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without deco um."

such kindred power: the remarks are even more original than the text. The writers of that day were many, and spoke one language, but we have seen no such critic,

It is with no little pleasure that we see the opinion which we have so frequently expressed of Sidney and his delightful Arcadia, confirm ed by such a writer as Mr. Lamb. It is possible that a man may judge well the writings of others, and yet write badly himself, but he who gives proofs of his own genius, will seldom be wrong in appreciating that of another, unless there be a lurking envy in his mind, or a more pardonable disposition to admire unduly, that with which he has fallen as it were in love in younger years, when the heart was more easily impressed, and the judgment yet immature. If Shakspeare be the velut inter ignes Luna minores

of his age, Sidney is the presiding star. Even Spenser, great as he is, and never to be loved too dearly, is yet inferior to our Sidney in power of intellect, and in vigour of imagination. And this is the writer whom Lord Orford tells us nobody can read!

Two specimens more of these true and delightful criticisms, and we have done. The first is upon the Witch of Middleton, a play, of which a few copies were printed for private distribution by Isaac Reed, chiefly on account of its resemblance to Macbeth.

"Though some resemblance may be traced between the Charms in Macbeth, and the Incantations in this Play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakspeare. His Witches are distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad

impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is That meeting sways his spell-bound.

destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body; Hecate in Middleton has a Son, a low buffoon: the those have power over the soul hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be de cended from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties, which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth But, in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life."

The other is upon the Two Noble Kinsmen.

"This scene bears indubitable marks of

Fletcher: the two which precede it give strong countenance to the tradition that Shakspeare had a hand in this play. The same judgment may be formed of the death of Arcite, and some other passages, not here given. They have a luxuriance in them which strongly resembles Shakspeare's manner in those parts of his plays where, the progress of the interest being subordinate, the poet was at leisure for description. I might fetch instances from Troilus and Timon. That Fletcher should have copied Shakspeare's manner through so many entire scenes (which is the theory of Mr. Steevens) is not very probable, that he could have done it with such facility is to me not certain. His ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops every moment; he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately that we see where they join: Shakspeare mingles every thing, he runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamourous for disclosure. If

THERE are some affecting in cidents in this little piece, which acts very well on the stage and reads very well in the closet. Inde-' pendently of other considerations, we give it praise for affording a representation of wedded love. It is too much the fashion of our dramatists to hold up the matrimonial life to scorn and ridicule by representing it as full of jealousies and bickerings, which we really

believe are much less frequently to be found in real life than they are upon the stage. This scandal and insult to our national morals and our national feelings should be resented by the hiss of an audience. Mr. Cherry in his comedy of the "Soldier's Daughter" drew an interesting picture of connubial love, for which we gave him our thanks at the time, as we now do to Mr. Kenney for the same reason.

THIS tragedy was printed six years ago, without the name of the author, and was allowed to remain in the ware-room of the bookseller unknown and neglected. John Edwards, Esq. of Old Court in the county of Wicklow, now acknowledges it to be his production, and in a post advertisement, which is somewhat singularly prefixed to the work, tells us that he had more than doubled the term of nine years prescribed by Horace to restrain the ardour of poets before he ventured to appear before the public in the character of an author.

The story is taken from the Cyropædia. Panthea, wife of Abradatas, king of the Susians; is taken prisoner by Cyrus and committed to the custody of Araspes one of his officers. The keeper becomes enamoured of his fair prisoner, and makes a vehement attack upon her; Cyrus interrupts him, and Araspes is only pardoned upon the condition that he shall fly to the Assyrian camp, endeavour to gain the confidence of the enemy, and betray them. Panthea, charmed with the conduct of Cyrus, entreats that her husband may become his friend; her request is granted, and she sends one of her faithful eunuchs to

her husband.

Abradatas, overpowered by the magnanimity of Cyrus, resolves to desert to hini, but rather incautiously avows his intention to a priest who communicates it to the Assyrian king Belshazzer. Abradatas is arrested and condemned to die. In the mean time Araspes had arrived at the tent of the Assyrian monarch, whose confidence he succeeded in gaining by pretending to betray the secrets of Cyrus. Orontes the confidential servant of Panthea visits Abradatas in prison in order to receive his last instructions, and is made the bearer of a dagger to his mistress.

Abradatas then proceeds to relate the particulars of his escape. Araspes, by means of the signet of Belshazzar, had liberated the husband of Panthea in order to expiate his past offence. Here the story seems naturally to end, but a tragedy must have a little murder in it, and a murderous ending is here. Abradatas requests of Cyrus the post of danger in the approaching battle,which is granted; and, after contributing greatly to the victory, he is killed. Panthea stabs herself upon his body, and her two eunuchs follow her example.