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actress which she is invariably found in tragedy. I can associate her face and form with any given part I am reading, but can no otherwise conceive her expression of countenance, intonation, and emphasis, than by imagining, to the best of my power, how a woman of fine understanding, and feeling heart, would look and speak in the circumstances you have placed her. If more than that 'could be done, Mrs Siddons would not be, as she is, guiltless of ever overstepping the modesty of nature to produce stage-effect. Mrs Yates continually did that, and the pathetic Mrs Cibber had a plaintive monotone, which she could not vary; but Mrs Pritchard and Garrick were, and Mrs Siddons is, too great and just to be peculiar.

Never, till yesterday, have I seen or heard the celebrated, though not yet acted dramas on the passions; and of them only the Count de Montford, which Mr White read to me last night very finely. I like the style, it is often Shakespearean, without servile imitation. Many of the reflections and observations in the earlier scenes of that play, evince a discriminating insight into human feeling and character. The situations in the close are of soul-harrowing strength and horror. It appears indubitable that the sublime, though exceptionable novel, Caleb Williams, was the origin

VOL. V.

of Mrs Radcliffe's design of writing plays illustrative of the passions, and the mischiefs that result from the absorbing dominion of any one of them; but the character of Falkland, in Caleb Williams, is a much more masterly comment on that text than the Count de Montford. Hatred, indulged to excess, must demonize any man; but when we perceive an high and delicate sense of honour the domineering idol of the soul, and find, as in Falkland, that a boundless devotion to its sway is capable of leading the human mind from great elevation of moral virtue to the last excesses of vice, naturally, and step by step, we find a nobler and more useful lesson of morality engraven on the heart. Greatly horrible effects are produced in the play of the Count de Montford, but nature and probability are grossly outraged in the incompetency of the causes which produce them. The native vices of the brutal Tyrrel are blended with the native virtues of Falkland; extremes which nature decreed should never meet. Falkland, it is true, becomes a demon, who was long an angel; but then the outrageous violence with which the vile Tyrrel persecutes and provokes, and, at length, by personal disgraceful insult, after every other abuse had been borne with the calmest sweetness, urges the stab of revenge from the greatly injured, preserves that apostasy from appearing unna

tural! Those circumstances make the subsequent degeneracy of Falkland, extreme as it proves, not incredible. The object of De Montford's deadly hatred is amiable, gentle, sportive;-he repays it with a sweetness and magnanimity, to which De Montford is twice indebted for his life;-he even seeks the monster's friendship, and is guilty of no offence but that of having tried to jest him out of his surly aversion. It is not only out of probability, but of possibility, that such a nothing of a provocation could urge a man, whose disposition was originally generous, brave, and merciful, to the darkest, foulest, and most deliberate murder. It violates all unity of character, the only dramatic unity which ought to be kept sacred. In the ever, and on all occasions, dark, violent, and envious Tyrrel, such lust of hatred is natural, from the eclipsing graces, and talents, and consequent influence of Falkland disarming the despotism which Tyrrel's large fortune had long enabled him to exert in his neighbourhood. In the gallant and liberal Montford, it is monstrous and inconceivable. If he had been represented as implacable, though brave-if the pride and arrogance of his disposition had been heightened, and heightened also the gay contempt of Rezenveltand if Rezenvelt had not twice, or even once, given Montford his life, the grandiy horrible effects

of the close might have been preserved in this play, without such total revolt of our credulity; but it is most true what Mrs Jackson observes, that, in all Mrs Radcliffe's writings, attentive only to terrific effects, she bestows no care upon their causes, and rashly cuts the knot of probability which she seems to want patience to untie. One has heard of a labouring mountain bringing forth a mouse: In Mrs R.'s writings mice bring forth mountains.

So many men of learning, most of them personally unknown, have written to me on my late publication, that my leisure has been totally absorbed in replying to them, and to my established correspondents on the subject. Thus have I, as yet, been prevented reading Miss More's new work, of which you speak so highly.

I congratulate you with my whole heart, that the continental campaign of this summer hitherto fulfils your prediction rather than mine. If it please God that the tide shall not turn again in favour of France, as it did after her defeats in 1793, and England and Germany will be content with the status quo, without resuming the mad project of coercing her as to the form of her government, we may then not have far to wade over the bloody gulf to the fair shore of peace. Then shall this dire war close, as all wars close, with

no advantages to any party to compensate the belligerent miseries, and well if it is no worse.Adieu! Adieu !

LETTER XLII.

Rev. R. FELLOWES of Harbury, Warwickshire. Lichfield, July 20, 1799.

ALLOW me to thank you for the honour you have done my late publication by your applausive, and, in itself, beautiful sonnet. Sincere praise is always welcome, but a poet's praise is of very heightened value.

Recently, and for the third time, have I perused your late admirable work*. All the vagrant ideas of my past life on the Christian system, I find collected and given back to me on your pages, connected by the most legitimate chain of inferences, and in language animated and perspicu

ous.

* A Picture of Christian Philosophy, by Robert Fellowes, A. B. Oxon. Printed for John White, bookseller, Horace's Head, Fleet Street.-S.

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