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Though hard to be restrained, defeats itself.-
Pursue thy story with a faithful tongue,

To the last hour that thon didst keep the child.

PRIS. Fear not my faith, though I must speak my shame. Within the cradle where the infant lay

Was stowed a mighty store of gold and jewels;
Tempted by which we did resolve to hide,
From all the world, this wonderful event,
And like a peasant breed the noble child.
That none might mark the change of our estate,
We left the country, travelled to the north,

Bought flocks and herds, and gradually brought forth
Our secret wealth. But God's all-seeing eye
Beheld our avarice, and smote us sore;
For one by one all our own children died,
And he, the stranger, sole remained the heir
Of what indeed was his. Fain then would I,
Who with a father's fondness loved the boy,
Have trusted him, now in the dawn of youth,
With his own secret; but my anxious wife,
Foreboding evil, never would consent.
Meanwhile the stripling grew in years and beauty;
And, as we oft observed, he bore himself
Not as the offspring of our cottage blood,

For nature will break ont: mild with the mild,
But with the froward he was fierce as fire,
And night and day he talked of war and arms.
I set myself against his warlike bent;
But all in vain; for when a desperate band
Of robbers from the savage mountains came-
LADY R. Eternal Frovidence! What is thy name?
PRIS. My name is Norval; and my name he bears.
LADY R. 'Tis he, 'tis he himself! It is my son!

O sovereign mercy! "Twas my child I saw !
No wonder, Anna, that my bosom burned.

ANNA. Just are your transports: ne'er was woman's heart
Proved with such fierce extremes. High-fated dame!
But yet remember that you are beheld

By servile eyes; your gestures may be seen

Impassioned, strange; perhaps your words o'erheard.

LADY R. Well dost thou counsel, Anna; Heaven bestow

On me that wisdom which my state requires !
ANNA. The moments of deliberation pass,

And soon you must resolve. This useful man
Must be dismissed in safety, ere my lord
Shall with his brave deliverer return.

PRIS. If 1, amidst astonishment and fear,
Have of your words and gestures rightly judged,
Thou art the daughter of my ancient master;
The child I rescued from the flood is thine.

LADY R. With thee dissimulation now were vain.

I am indeed the daughter of Sir Malcolm ;

The child thou rescuedst from the flood is mine.

PRIS. Blest be the hour that made me a poor man!

My poverty hath saved my master's house.

LADY R. Thy words surprise me; sure thou dost not feign! The tear stands in thine eye: such love from thee

Sir Malcolm's house deserved not, if aright

Thou told'st the story of thy own distress.

PRIS. Sir Malcolm of our barons was the flower; The fastest friend, the best, the kindest master; But ah! he knew not of my sad estate.

After that battle, where his gallant son,
Your own brave brother, fell, the good old lord
Grew desperate and reckless of the world;
And never, as he erst was wont, went forth
To overlook the conduct of his servants.
By them I was thrust out, and them I blame;
May Heaven so judge me as I judged my master,

And God so love me as I love his race!

LADY R. His race shall yet reward thee. On thy faith
Depends the fate of thy loved master's house.
Rememberest thou a little lonely hut,

That like a holy hermitage appears
Among the cliffs of Carron?

PRIS. I remember

The cottage of the cliffs.

LADY R. 'Tis that I mean:

There dwells a man of venerable age,

Who in my father's service spent his youth:
Tell him I sent thee, and with him remain,
Till I shall call upon thee to declare,

Before the king and nobles, what thou now
To me hast told. No more but this, and thou
Shalt live in honour all thy future days;
Thy son so long shall call thee father still,
And all the land shall bless the man who saved
The son of Douglas, and Sir Malcolm's heir.

JOHN HOME, author of 'Douglas,' was by birth connected with the family of the Earl of Home; his father was town-clerk of Leith, where the poet was born in 1722. He entered the church, and succeeded Blair, author of The Grave,' as minister of Athelstaneford. Previous to this, however, he had taken up arms as a volunteer in 1745 against the Chevalier, and after the defeat at Falkirk, was imprisoned in the old castle of Doune, whence he effected his escape, with some of his associates, by cutting their blankets into shreds, and letting themselves down on the ground. The romantic poet soon found the church as severe and tyrannical as the army of Charles Edward. So violent a storm was raised by the fact that a Presbyterian minister had written a play, that Home was forced to succumb to the presbytery, and resign his living. Lord Bute rewarded him with the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere, and on the accession of George III. in 1760, when the influence of Bute was paramount, the poet received a pension of £300 per annum. He wrote various other tragedies, which soon passed into oblivion; but with an income of about £600 per annum, with an easy, cheerful, and benevolent disposition, and enjoying the friendship of David Hume, Blair, Robertson, and all the most distinguished for rank or talents, John Home's life glided on in happy tranquillity. He survived all his literary associates, and died in 1803, aged eighty-six. We subjoin some fragments from the tragic dramas mentioned above:

Against the Crusades.

I here attend him

In expeditions which I ne'er approved,

In holy wars. Your pardon, reverend father,

I must declare I think such wars the fruit
Of idle courage, or mistaken zeal;
Sometimes of rapine, and religious rage,
To every mischief prompt.

Sure I am, 'tis madness,
Inhuman madness, thus from half the world
To drain its blood and treasure, to neglect
Each art of peace, each care of government;
And all for what? By spreading desolation,
Rapine, and slaughter o'er the other half,
To gain a conquest we can never hold.

I venerate this land. Those sacred hills,

Those vales, those cities, trod by saints and prophets,
By God himself, the scenes of Heavenly wonders,
Inspire me with a certain awful joy.

But the same God, my friend, pervades, sustains,
Surrounds, and fills this universal frame;

And every land, where spreads his vital presence,
His all-enlivening breath, to me is holy.
Excuse me, Theald, if I go too far:

I meant alone to say, I think these wars
A kind of persecution. And when that-
That most absurd and cruel of all vices,
Is once begun, where shall it find an end?
Each in its turn, or has or claims a right
To wield its dagger to return its furies,
And first or last they fall upon ourselves.

Love.

THOMSON'S Edward and Eleonora.

Why should we kill the best of passions, Love?
It aids the hero, bids Ambition rise

To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds,
Even softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue.

Miscalculations of Old Men.

THOMSON'S Sophonisba.

Those old men, those plodding grave state pedants,
Forget the course of youth; their crooked prudence,
To baseness verging still, forgets to take
Into their fine-spun schemes the generous heart,
That, through the cobweb system bursting, lays
Their labours waste.

THOMSON'S Tancred and Sigismunda.

Awfulness of a Scene of Pagan Rites.

This is the secret centre of the isle :

Here, Romans, pause, and let the eye of wonder
Gaze on the solemn scene; behold yon oak,

How stern he frowns, and with his broad brown arms
Chills the pale plain beneath him: mark yon altar,

The dark streain brawling round its rugged base;
These cliffs, these yawning caverns, this wide circus,
Skirted with unhewn stone; they awe my soul,

As if the very genius of the place

Himself appeared, and with terrific dread

Stalked through his drear domain. And yet, my friends,
If shapes like his be but the fancy's coinage,

Surely there is a hidden power that reigns

'Mid the lone majesty of untamed nature,

Controlling sober reason; tell me else,

Why do these haunts of barbarous superstition

O'ercome me thus ? I scorn them; yet they awe me.

Forgiveness.

So prone to error is our mortal frame,

Time could not step without a trace of horror,
If wary nature on the human heart,
Amid its wild variety of passions,

Had not impressed a soft and yielding sense,
That when offences give resentment birth,
The kindly dews of penitence may raise

The seeds of mutual mercy and forgiveness.

MASON'S Caractacus.

GLOVER'S Boadicea.

GEORGE COLMAN-ARTHUR MURPHY-HUGH KELLY.

GEORGE COLMAN (1733–1794), manager of Covent Garden Theatre, was an excellent comic writer, and produced above thirty pieces, a few of which deservedly keep possession of the stage. His 'Jealous Wife,' founded on Fielding's Tom Jones,' has some highly effective scenes and well-drawn characters. It was produced in 1761; five years afterwards, Colman joined with Garrick and brought out The Clandestine Marriage,' in which the character of an aged beau affecting gaiety and youth is strikingly personified in Lord Ogleby. Colman translated the comedies of Terence (1764) and Horace's 'Art of Poetry' (1783). He also wrote some excellent light humorous essays. -ARTHUR MURPHY (1727-1805), a voluminous and miscellaneous writer, added comedies as well as tragedies to the stage, and his Way to Keep Him' is still occasionally performed.-HUGH KELLY (1739-1777), an Irish dramatic poet and a scurrilous newspaper writer, surprised the public by producing, in 1768, a comedy, False Delicacy,' which had remarkable success both on the fortunes and character of the author; the profits of his first third night realised £150-the largest sum of money he had ever before seen-'and_from a low, petulant, absurd, aud ill-bred censurer,' says Davies, Kelly was transformed to the humane, affable, good-natured, well-bred man.'

RICHARD CUMBERLAND-OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

The marked success of Kelly's sentimental style gave the tone to a much abler dramatist, RICHARD CUMBERLAND (1732-1811), who, after two or three unsuccessful pieces, in 1771 brought out The West Indian,' one of the best stage-plays which English comedy can yet boast. The plot, incidents, and characters-including the first draught of an Irish gentleman which the theatre had witnessed-are all well sustained. Other dramas of Cumberland, as 'The Wheel of Fortune,' "The Fashionable Lover,' &c. were also acted with applause, though now too stiff and sentimental for our audiences.-GOLDSMITH thought that Cumberland had carried the refinement of comedy to excess, and he set himself to correct the fault. His first dramatic performance,

'The Good-natured Man,' presents one of the happiest of his delineations in the character of Croaker; but as a whole, the play wants point and sprightliness. His second drama, 'She Stoops to Conquer,' performed in 1773, has all the requisites for interesting and amusing an audience; and Johnson said, he knew of no comedy for many years that had answered so much the great end of comedy-making an audience merry.' The plot turns on what may be termed a farcical incident-two parties mistaking a gentleman's house for an inn. Such an adventure, however, is said to have occurred to Goldsmith himself. He was returning to school after the holidays on a borrowed hack, and being overtaken by night in the streets of Ardagh, he inquired with a lofty confident air---having a guinea in his pocket-for the best house of entertainment in the town. A wag pointed to the house of the squire, a Mr. Featherston, and Goldsmith entering, ordered supper and a bottle of wine, with a hot cake for breakfast in the morning! It was not till he had despatched this latter meal, and was looking at his guinea with pathetic aspect of farewell, that the truth was told him by the goodnatured squire.'-(Forster's Life.) This was a good foundation for a series of comic mistakes. But the excellent discrimination of character, and the humour and vivacity of the dialogue throughout the play, render this piece one of the richest contributions which has been made to modern comedy. The native pleasantry and originality of Goldsmith were never more happily displayed, and his success, as Davies records, 'revived fancy, wit, gaiety, humour, incident, and character, in the place of sentiment and moral preachment.'

A Deception.-From 'She Stoops to Conquer.'

LANDLORD of the Three Jolly Pigeons' and TONY LUMPKIN.

LANDLORD. There be two gentlemen in a post-chaise at the door. They've lost their way upo' the forest, and they are talking something about Mr. Hardcastle. TONY. As sure as can be, one of them must be the gentleman that's coming down to court my sister. Do they seem to be Londoners?

LAND. I believe they may. They look woundily like Frenchmen.

TONY. Then desire them to step this way, and I'll set them right in a twinkling. [Exit Landlord.] Gentlemen, as they mayn't be good enough company for you, step down for a moment, and I'll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon. [Exeunt Mob from the Alehouse.] Father-in-law has been calling me a whelp and hound this halfyear. Now, if I pleased, I could be so revenged upon the old grumbletonian. But then I am afraid-afraid of what? I shall soon be worth fifteen hundred a year, and let him frighten me out of that if he can.

Enter LANDLORD, conducting MARLOW and HASTINGS.

MARLOW. What a tedious uncomfortable day have we had of it! We were told it was but forty miles across the country, and we have come above threescore. TONY. No offence, gentlemen; but I am told you have been inquiring for one Mr. Hardcastle in these parts. Do you know what part of the country you are in ? HAST. Not in the least, sir; but should thank you for information.

TONY. Nor the way you came?

HAST. No, sir; but if you can inform us

TONY. Why, gentlemen, if you know neither the road you are going, nor where you are, nor the road you came, the first thing I have to inform you is that-you have lost your way.

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