not a single tragedy, derived from the Greek mythology, keeps possession of our stage, or is read in our closet. The reasons which we have assigned above for the style which the Greeks adopted in their drama, will, we think justify a poet for using the same style in scriptural subjects. The characters are too well known to all, and too sanctified in our imaginations, to admit of any addition, or any thing that is not perfectly dignified and solemn. Accordingly, we have always considered Athaliah as the first production of the French drama, no doubt because we could there tolerate the French manner. While we have yawned, (we fairly confess it,) in the midst of all the elegance and well-wrought woes of Phédre and Andromaque, we have never risen from the perusal of Athaliah, but with feelings of the most sublime solemnity. We are not sorry, therefore, to see Athaliah in an English dress; and we are, on the whole, not discontented with the dress in which the translator has chosen to present her to the public. We could have wished, indeed, that it had been a little more in the costume of our older dramatists, a little more in that flowing and peculiar style which we should find it difficult to describe, but no one, we are fully persuaded, who has competently admired Shakspeare and Massinger, will feel perfectly content with a tragedy in any style but our own, or will ever think any style our own, but that of our good old school. This style consists partly in the language, and partly in the flow of the verse, but is perfectly indescribable in both. In this style, which, we think, is by no means unattainable în the present day, we have often wished for two or three volumes containing specimens of plays, not of parts of plays, from the Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and German writers. Would not this, it may be said, be transgressing against a rule we have so often laid down, that every translater should be as much as possible in the style of the original? We ask, in answer, whether the style of Massinger and Shakspeare be the same? whether Jonson's be like either? Whether, again, Beaumont and Fletcher did not adopt one entirely distinct from all three? What we recommend is, merely a kind of dialect of the English language, and a particular form of the English verse; to which, we think, a person who should make the above objection would be to the full as pedantical, as he who should translate a Greek play in Iambic alexandrines, with a proper mixture of acatalectic anapæstic dimeters, with their bases and proceleusmatic verses. This is as much the appropriate style of the English drama, as rhyming alexandrines are of the French. We should wish to see Shakspeare himself in rhyme, when translated into French; certainly not for our own gratification, but because we are well aware that the French could enjoy him in no other than a national dress. We shall leave our readers to form their own estimate of one or two passages of the English Athaliah. But where that bright futurity foreshewn JOAB. And why renounce the hope which Heaven ensures ? ABNER. Ah! whence shall David's promis'd offspring rise? Of Athaliah's vengeance. Shall we call Her victims from their eight years sleep of death?, JOAB. What would my Abner then? ABNER. Oh joyous day! With what devotion would I hail my King! • Whate'er I did, Whose inroads mock'd your Kings, now waste the vale E'en Jehu, swift destroyer of my house, Shrinks in his covert of Samarian hills. To quell that murderer's force, my envoys rous'd A near and potent foe, whose legions press On all his frontier; while these realms enjoy, In proud repose, the fruits of policy. These are my triumphs; but their noon-day brightness, A dream-shall Athaliah prate of dreams! As on her death-day; suffering had not chang'd Crept through mine ear. "Tremble, thou other self! First Voice. In this hour of fearful anguish, SALOMITH. The God of Israel spake. But can ye pierce the veil opaque, Stupendous cloud, thy judgments lower; First Voice. Sion falls! Heav'ns wrath enfolds her In its desolating fires! Second Voice. Sion lives, till time expires! Heav'n's eternal truth upholds her! First Voice. I see the gloom of her funereal flames. Second Voice. On me the sunrise of her glory beams. She sinks engulph'd in woes profound! She rises with celestial splendour crown'd! ཕ Fatal fall! First Voice. Second Voice. Immortal birth! First Voice. Shrieks of death my heart appal! Second Voice. Shouts of triumph fill the earth! Break off your troubled strain ! Three Voices. Bow before his vengeful power, Friend and father, God of love, If our hearts that union know, If our will be one with thine, Who shall break the bond divine? And what else of joy below? And what other bliss above? No pure drops on earth beside, And all Heaven's eternal tide Is the ocean of thy love!" Art. XIII. Private Hours of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his Earliest Years to the period of his Marriage with the Arch-Duchess Maria Louisa. Written by Himself, during his residence in the Isle of Elba. 2 Vols 12mo. Price 10s. 6d. No English Publisher's name. pp. 62-64. THIS is a publication, which so outrages both decency and common sense, and which carries on its face so obvious an air of imposition, that nothing but an insatiate appetite for slander could, we should imagine, reconcile any one to its perusal We should entertain no hope as to the moral chaacter of the person who has endeavoured, without sufficient ability to support the deception, to impose these coarse and puerile effusions upon the public as the production of Napoleon Bonaparte; were it not that in withholding his name from this despicable performance, he gives some indication of a sense of shame The soi-disant Editor pretends that a Duke, whose name we are left to guess, brought him the manuscript, with an injunction to print it! It is perfectly unnecessary to attempt to prove that this is not the performance of Napoleon Bonaparte. The ignorance of the Author, with respect both to the character it professes to delineate, and to the human character in general, appears in every page. Napoleon is made not only to accuse himself of crimes at nine years of age, which not the laxest morality would hold venial in manhood, but to argue coolly in their defence upon the ground of moral and physical considerations. The work does not contain a single interesting anecdote or trait of character; it consists merely of a succession of vulgar excesses vulgarly narrated, and might just as well have been an account of the private hours of the Editor himself, as of Bonaparte. But the strongest terms of reprobation are due to the deliberate wickedness of an author, whose apparent object in the polluting details of his narrative, is to do as much mischief as comes within the slender compass of his ability. We cannot forbear severely to reprehend the translator, and all who have been concerned in ushering into public notice this silly and impure performance. A Art. XIV. The Spirit of Prayer; or a Discourse on the Nature of Prayer, &c. With directions for attaining the Gift of Prayer. By Nathaniel Vincent, M.A. a Non-Conformist Minister. new Edition, carefully Revised and Corrected. To which a Memoir of the Author is prefixed. By J. H. Hopkins. 18mo. pp. xviii, 168. Price 28. Conder. EVERY judicious effort to preserve the remains of the Nonconformist ministers from oblivion, is highly deserving of commendation They were men, not only pre-eminent as judicious divines, but for the most part of highly respectable and very solid attainments in learning, and many of them were distinguished as scholars and as pulpit orators. The name of Nathaniel Vincent is by no means one of the least venerable. Wood, in his Athenæ Oxononienses, mentions him as a considerable scholar. This little work, which on its first publication went through at least five editions,' had become exceedingly scarce, and almost unknown. Its intrinsic excellence, as a plain and useful treatise on the subject of Prayer, rendered its publication very desirable, and the public are indebted to Mr. Hopkins for the cheap form in which he has printed this edition, in the hope of its obtaining a wide circulation. Art. XV. Considerations sur Genève, dans ses Rapports avec l'Angleterre et les Etats Protestants, Suivies d'un Discours prononcé à Genève sur la Philosophie de l'Histoire. Par J. C. L. Sismonde de Sismondi. 8vo. pp. 47. Murray. 1814. THESE two short pieces bear the characteristics that distin guish the larger works of the Author, which have made him so advantageously known, on the Continent and in this country. They display liberality and comprehension of views, powers of language, and a certain warmth and benevolence of feeling, |