The characters are conceived with considerable forcethat of Theodora in particular is a fine combination of the beauties of Mrs. Beverley in the Gamester, and of Belvidera in Venice Preserved, The Duke of Longueville is, however, in our opinion, decidedly the best, and we think it a highly original portrait. His passion, which at the first view appears somewhat outrageous and unnatural, by the mode which it leads him to seek its gratification, will be found, upon a careful consideration, to be but the diseased workings of anger, though he himself feels it as revenge. In this respect, whenever Miss Baillie shall favor the world with her developement of the passion of Anger, the Duke of Longueville of our Author, will afford a curious point of comparison, and furnish the more voluminous critics with the means of estimating the respective intellectual powers of two very extraordinary Ladies. Doricourt is a strong, but not improbable or unnatural, picture of libertine infatuation. At the present moment, while a certain philosophess, celebrated more on account of her political connexions than her merits deserve, is so much in vogue among our fashionables, we feel a degree of patriotic pride in having occasion to advert to the superiority of our own fairer countrywomen. In er peculiar lie, the perfectability philosophy, Madame de Stael is far below the almost forgotten Mary Wolstonecraft, both in dignity of thought and eloquence of elucidation. In a much higher class of lit- erature, the dramatic, in which Miss Baillie stands above the females of every other country, the Baroness has scarcely any place at all; and we have only to mention the name of Miss Edgeworth, to make those who would set up the presumptuous Frenchwoman as the first female writer of the age, blush at their inadvertant idolatry. Madamie's character of Corinna, the most celebrated of all her attempts at the delineation of character, is a palpable plagiarism from that of Clementina in Sir Charles Grandison. Yet is the author, for the masculine swagger of her philosophical dogmas, and the accidental piquancy of the language, in which she has written, represented as little less interesting to the welfare of the Christian world than the woman in the Revelation, who fled into the wilderness, as the Baroness came to England, because of a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, that stood ready to devour her man-child, as the Emperor Napoleon would have done Madame's book on Germany, "of which she was travailing in birth and pained to be delivered." 68 (~69) CHARACTERS. SIR ROBERT, Patron of Edward and Caroline. EDWARD, Husband of Caroline; acting as Secretary in the Family of Sir Robert. THOMAS, House-Steward to Sir Robert. HENRY, Son to Sir Robert. CLODDY, a Clown. CAROLINE, the Wife of Edward; Housekeeper to Sir Robert. SYLVIA, Sister to Edward, and married to Henry. THE WORD OF HONOR; A Comedy. ACT I. SCENE I-A Room. On one side a desk, EDWARD writing; on the other a table, CAROLINE sewing. Car. Edward! my love. Edw. Well, Caroline, what want ye? Car. You have, I think, a heavy task this morning. Car. Such constant writing is not wise. Edw. When there is need, I must not spare myself. Car. Come, breathe a little; stop, and chat with mẹ. Edw. Peace; let me write-I have no time for trifles. Car. My dearest Edward, you afflict me greatly, In every day I see you more unquiet, VOL. I. Rej. Th. No. III. Z |