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peculiarly French. The widow of Hector, speaking of her child,

says,

"Je ne l'ai point encore embrassé d'aujourd'hui."

This verse is regarded by some foreigners as a feeble common-place, and is translated as such by Phillips, in The Distressed Mother; but to the French it brings the sentiment and the image of the Mother's Morning Kiss to her Child;—one of the most sacred and endearing of domestic tendernesses to a French woman. Phillips's Distressed Mother is a most slanderous translation. The sweet notes of tender sentiment, the frequent strokes of vigour and sublimity, the poetic and elegant, yet simple colour of the style of the original, are egregiously missed by him in every scene. That exquisitely-wrought scene, in which Hermione upbraids the faithless Pyrrhus in a tone of cutting irony and insulted pride, sometimes yielding for an instant to the resistless frankness of impassioned love, becomes in the English play an unanimated lumber of mere words. Let the reader but refer to the text, and compare this single short scene, and form his judgment. Racine's Hermione (to give a few instances in which the very meaning is mistaken) says,

"Je ne t'ai point aimé, cruel!—qu'ai-je donc fait ? Phillips's "Have I not loved you then, perfidious man?" "Je t'aimais inconstant—qu'aurais-je fait fidele." "I loved you when inconstant, and even now, Inhuman King," &c.

Racine.
Phillips.

Racine.

"Vous ne repondez point?—perfide, je le voi

Phillips.

Tu comptes les momens que tu perds avec moi

Ton cœur impatient de revoir ta Troyenne," &c.

"See if the barbarous prince vouchsafes an answer,
Go then to the loved Phrygian," &c.

These few examples suffice without farther comment.

Racine invented nothing; he even narrowed the sphere, and fettered the freedom, of the drama; but he embellished to the very perfection of art.

Crebillon brought upon the stage the memorable horrors of the tragic family of Atreus, and somewhat checked the taste diffused by the fascinating effeminacy of Racine; but his traits of terror were too unsoftened to sway the public taste, and his capacity not sufficiently creative or comprehensive to emancipate and enlarge the domain of the drama.

This was reserved for Voltaire, that extraordinary and undefinable intelligence, whose impress remains upon the age in which he lived, and who has left behind so many imperishable monuments of glory and of shame. Voltaire opened to French tragedy the vast field of modern history, substituted picturesque and powerful action for narration, rejected subordinate and insipid love-intrigues, and trained the senses of the French to situations of force-to terrific pictures— to the accessories of theatric illusion-to the sight of blood: in other words, he infused into the drama of his country a portion of the soul

of English tragedy, which he had seized by personal observation of our stage, during his well-known visit to this country, but particularly by the study of Shakspeare. He beheld the apparition in Hamlet, and he transferred that unrivalled scene of preternatural terror to the French stage, in his "Semiramis." He there introduces the ghost of the murdered king for the purpose of preventing the horror of an unconsciously incestuous marriage, between the mariticidal mother and her own and her husband's son. He saw Macbeth come out of the King's chamber-the tale of Duncan's murder told by the reeking dagger in his bloody grasp; and he copied this fearful picture where Ninias comes out of the tomb, his hands recking with the blood of his parent. He adopted the force and pathos of our catastrophes in the deaths of Orosmane,' 'Tancrede,' 'Zamore.' It would be waste of time to allude to the wretched copies of his plays made by the Hills, Millers, and Murphys of the last age. The "Zaire" alone, compared with the "Zara" of Hill, furnishes numberless examples not only of original beauties, but of some which the French poet took from "Othello," overlooked or disfigured, with ludicrous stupidity, by the translator. Perhaps French tragedy, in order to be fully appreciated by foreigners, should be seen acted. Voltaire could not have seized the spirit and character of our drama, if he had not witnessed its representation. Voltaire, and particularly Racine, should be studied by an Englishman with the magic commentary of Duchesnois and Talma on the stage. He will there perceive touches of poetic art and inspiration, which escaped him in the closet. He will learn that narration may derive all the force and vividness of action from the depictive art and power with which it is written and recited: a look, a tone, a word, a position, or slight motion of the hand from Talma,-and we behold, in imagination, Edipus with the blood of Laius dropping from his fingers. Our dread of long speeches would also be somewhat diminished. The narrative by Philoctetes of his wrongs and sufferings is one of the longest, but Talma declaims it in a tone of Sophoclean pathos-so varies and relieves it by mute, but eloquent pauses of physical exhaustion-by changes of position, reciting one part standing-another, seated on a fragment of rock at the mouth of his cave, that emotion goes on increasing to the close. This will readily be imagined by those who have witnessed a recent performance on our own stage. Mr. Macready, in the death-bed scene of Henry the Fourth, sustains the most powerful interest and emotion, through a whole act of almost exclusive recitation, with no relief but the poetry of Shakspeare, and the rare art of declaiming pathetically. It must be confessed, however, that the long speeches of French tragedy are, in general, severe tria's of patience from the lips of any but the first-rate performers.

W.

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THE brave Roland!-the brave Roland—
False tidings reach'd the Rhenish strand
That he had fall'n in fight;

And thy faithful bosom swoon'd with pain,
O loveliest maiden of Allémayne,

For the loss of thine own true knight.

But why so rash has she ta'en the veil,
In yon Nonnenwerder's cloisters pale?

For her vow had scarce been sworn,
And the fatal mantle o'er her flung,
When the Drachenfells to a trumpet rung—
'Twas her own dear warrior's horn.

Woe, woe! each heart shall bleed, shall break!
She would have hung upon his neck,

Had he come but yester-even;

And he had clasp'd those peerless charms
That shall never, never fill his arms,
Or meet him but in heaven.

Yet Roland the brave, Roland the true,
He could not bid that spot adieu;

It was dear, still 'midst his woes;
For he loved to breathe the neighb'ring air,
And to think she blest him in her prayer,
When the Halleluiah rose.

There's yet one window of that pile,
Which he built above the nun's green isle,
Thence sad and oft look'd he,

(When the chant and organ sounded slow)
On the mansion of his love below,
For herself he might not see.

She died!-He sought the battle-plain ;
Her image fill'd his dying brain,

When he fell, and wish'd to fall:

And her name was in his latest sigh,
When Roland, the flower of chivalry,
Expired at Roncevall.

The tradition which forms the substance of these stanzas is still preserved in Germany. An ancient tower on a height, called the Rolandseck, a few miles above Bonn on the Rhine, is shewn as the habitation which Roland built in sight of a nunnery, into which his mistress had retired on having heard an unfounded account of his death. Whatever may be thought of the credibility of the legend, its scenery must be recollected with pleasure by every one who has ever visited the romantic landscape of the Drachenfells, the Rolandseck, and the beautiful adjacent islet of the Rhine, where a nunnery still stands.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE LONDON CRIES.

Full is the city with the sons of art,
And trade and joy in every busy street,
Mingling are heard

THOMSON.

I HAVE been dipping lately into the literature of the day, and spent nearly two hours a morning of the last week over the subject of the London Cries. I am fond of decomposing a cheap material of this nature. I allow the volatile parts to escape at their pleasure, and am content with whatever may have been precipitated during the process. I find no such place as the metropolis for the economical indulgence Between the poets and the doctors, there of this my chemical turn. is scarce a virtue in any herb, fruit, or blossom, but has been laid open to all mankind. Many and wonderful have been the discoveries effected in the fields-tongues have been found in trees

books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones,

and should the marvellous receipt by which these unexpected properties have been detected get into proper hands, we know not what the consequence may be in the city. I have sometimes considered that interesting portion of our fellow-citizens, who compose the performers of the London Cries, in the character of a peripatetic sect, who spend their lives in traversing the porticoes, lanes, and alleys, of this great metropolis, carrying about with them-not vain opinions and dogmas concocted by presumption, a love of singularity and ignorance, but such practical and wholesome fare as has been found useful to men in all ranks and stations.

But passing over this branch of the enquiry, (which I do, be it observed, out of pure tenderness to my respected friend the Stagyrite,) 1 hasten to contemplate them in a light, in which they appear to the greatest advantage. I do not know of any body of persons who have so many claims to be regarded as the depositaries of that ancient style of minstrelsy, of which we now have but some doubtful Like their romantic brethren of the chivalrous and remote traces. time, they closely adhere to nature in all their performances, preferring plain, unadorned melody, to the corruptions and abuses that now chiefly go under the denomination of harmony. Like these too, the modern fraternity are not tied down in their compositions by these laws, which are found from experience, so much to cramp the imagination, and beneath which the helots of Parnassus, now-a-days, do so piteously groan.* The charge of a syllable-cide hath no terrors for them. Again, what can more clearly demonstrate their lineage, than their cleaving, amidst every obstacle, unto the erratic life so characteristic of the ancient bards. They maintain with strict fidelity the proverbial connexion between poverty and poetry, which has subsisted ever since the days of Amphion, the latest, I believe, of the inspired train that was any thing of a builder. And herein, let me observe,

* See Cowper's letter to Lady Hesketh, justifying certain elisions in his poems.

they have shewn only a just degree of respect for the traditions of their order. They are not backward either, in paying to the Muses those de licate compliments which are not direct enough for flattery, but are sufficiently obvious not to be misunderstood. "The Muses," says a good authority, "contrary to all other ladies, pay no distinction to dress, and never partially mistake the pertness of embroidery for wit, nor the modesty of want for dulness." The hint has not been lost upon the itinerant profession, as every body acquainted with their persons can testify. There is nothing in the economy of the tribe I am so much pleased with, as the simplicity of the female performers-nothing! Surely it must be refreshing to hear one of this dramatis persona, come to the air or recitative at once, without our being compelled to witness a prologue of strange gestures-revolutions of the features, and hemming, which our donnas on the stage or in the drawing-room do labour to grace their songs withal. There is with them no bandying of nods and winks-no languishing bend to set off an ancle or a profile-no coy shuddering ere they launch upon the stream of melody— the hearer is never invited to forget the character in the woman, or to devote himself to a row of fine teeth, whilst his attention should be engaged by the music. The nature of the business of this society does not open an opportunity for the workings of that petty jealousy which oftentimes makes the "green"-room "one" yellow, and exercises the patience of the worthy manager, even unto exhaustion. Each performer is allowed to assume the particular character that pleases him best, and to retain it no longer than his convenience will allow. Never were servants of the public so much disposed, as they have always shewn themselves to be, to follow with due submission and promptitude the taste and judgment of the town; each stands upon his own claims to patronage. There never was a class, depending upon their public exertions, that are so little indebted to the artificial means of acquiring fame. Each one looks to himself as the sole author and supporter of his own celebrity. If there be an individual amongst them of distinguished merit, it will not long lie concealed, for there are no people that come so much, and in so many different agreeable characters, before the public. I have been often greatly struck with the judgment and skill which this company have displayed in suiting their airs or measures to the sense. So much success, indeed, has been attained by them in this branch of the profession, that an experienced ear would be able to descry at a considerable distance, merely from the nature of the movement, the particular commodity which was the subject of it. In proportion as the burden of the chant is valuable and important, as an article of necessity or of luxury, the notes which serve for its vehicle, are solemn and slow. Thus, shrimps, periwinkles, and things of the like subordinate rank, are dismissed in presto time. Poultry of all sorts, on the contrary, even where the names are of the monosyllabic tribe, are uttered with the most dignified andante hesitation. The accuracy and uniformity displayed by them in the execution of this branch of the art have

The Beggar's Opera.

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