people imagine. They are founded in nature, and have their response in the sensations of the multitude, who feel, without precisely knowing why, every departure from a requisition that directly appeals to their own experience. Audiences are like juries in libel cases, who, under the provisions of the act of Charles James Fox, are judges alike of the law and the fact, and preside over not only the morals of a play, but the distribution of its action, upon which its success chiefly depends. The drama of The Duchess de la Valliere is exposed to radical objections on this ground. The plot presents a succession of distinct scenes, in which the sources of interest are shifted and deranged; the progress of the events does not mount gradually to the catastrophe; the want of unity of design is felt throughout; the attention is scattered over the surface, instead of being concentrated to a point: and the immediate sympathy of the spectator is called off from one character to another, as the broken incidents advance, when it ought to be constantly attracted onwards with the fortunes of the chief movers of the action. These objections must be attributed in a great measure to the nature of the subject, which hardly admitted of that close and intense development of interest which is essential to excellence, while it utterly prohibited the dramatist, had he even been so inclined, from producing a denouement sufficiently impressive to fulfil the demands of tragedy. convent, without an absolute abrogation of the conventual laws. So paramount is the influence of Bragelone over the whole persona, that the fate of the remainder scarcely touches our feelings, or only to provoke our contempt. The play, consequently, displays that sort of anomaly, that disturbs our sympathies without engaging them. We watch the course of Bragelone with increasing emotion, while we are conscious that Louise ought to be entitled to the pity we expend upon him. It is but justice to observe, however, that notwithstanding all the pains the author has taken to make Louise appear amiable, she sinks deeper and deeper, scene after scene, in contempt and abhorrence. As a poem, this drama is occasionally effective, and sometimes rises into sublimity: but the flight is not sustained, and the author's wings often fall, as we suspect the tarnished plumes of his heroine did, before they reach the height towards which they betray a perpetual instinct. The necessity under which Mr. Bulwer was placed of introducing the court of Versailleswhich, except by the scene-painters and machinists, could not be represented on the stage-has committed him to a very absurd underplot, in which the Duke de Lauzun, the living enigma of his day, and Madame de Montespan and her silly husband, and other witless and frivolous persons, are brought forward to give an image of that brilliant and dissipated scene. The whole of this bye-play is a signal failure. wants the vivacity, the refinement, the excess, and turbulent joyousness of Versailles: poor Madame de Montespan is painted as a mere lady of the bedchamber, plotting to accomplish her own disgrace; and Louis XIV. is steeped in a fictitious grandeur that not only does little credit to his illustrious name, but that is very inadequate to the exhibition of his mosaic character. But the most palpable fault of treatment lies in that part of the play, which, singly considered, is in all respects the best. The most subtle artifices of diction, or contrivance of effects, could not have rendered Louise de la Vallière that immaculate impersonation in which a deep and permanent anxiety could be centred; the author, therefore, transferred the heroic virtues-the epic spirit of his drama, to her discarded lover, Bragelone, whose devotion to an unfaithful mistress brought him to an untimely grave. By an excusable liberty with historical facts, he makes Bragelone the instrument of her redemption from the court, and of her final seclusion in a Carmelite convent. He is the saving grace of the piece. The nobility of mind he discovers, 'Tis our last eve, my mother! his high sense of honour, his frankness, truth, and courage, sustain the interest even through the “solemn mockery" of the last scene, which exhibits a religious ceremony such as never could have taken place in any It A passage or two will abundantly exemplify the quality of the dialogue. The following is part of the opening scene between Madame de Vallière and her daughter, previously to her departure from the home of her youth. MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. MADAME DE LA VALLIERE. Thou regrett'st it, My own Louise! albeit the court invites thee- MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. In which I shall not see my mother! Nor these old walls, in which, from every stone, Childhood speaks eloquent of happy years; Nor vines and woods which made me love the earth, The vesper bell! My mother, when once more MADAME DE LA VALLIERE. Do I not know thy soul? through every snare warn, And Conscience be thy mother and thy guide! MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. Oh, may I merit all thy care, and most Thy present trust! Thou'lt write to me, my mother, The images gathered into this picture of the home of childhood and its associations are sufficiently common-place, and discover in the author no higher poetical faculty than that of collecting with skill the figures and allusions most appropriate to the situation. But Mr. Bulwer is capable of an occasional snatch of poetry full of true feeling, although, perhaps, slightly spoiled by extraneous embellishment in the expression. Ex. gr., from the interview between Bragelone and Louise, when she is struggling with her half-confessed passion for the king. BRAGELONE. Curs'd be the lies that wronged thee !-doubly curst MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. Hold !-thou malign'st thy king! BRAGELONE. He spared not thee! MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. The king!-God bless him! BRAGELONE. Would'st thou madden me? Thou !-no-thou lov'st him not?-thou hid'st thy face! Woman, thou tremblest! Lord of Hosts, for this Breathing through earth the Lovely and the Holy, I thought of thee, and smiled-for thou wert sinless! And when they told of some diviner act That made our nature noble, my heart whisper'dSo would have done Louise !-'Twas thus I loved thee! To lose thee, I can bear it; but to lose The best scenes are those that take place between Louise and Bragelone, and Bragelone and the King. There is more pith in them-more reality-more intense emotion and just sentiment, than in the whole of the rest of the play. From one of the latter we take a burst of denunciation, uttered by the indignant lover, who has now taken the cowl, against the monarch, who at this period acquired the title of the Great. The world proclaims you "Great;" A million warriors bled to buy your laurels ; But, to the humble minister of God, You are the king who has betrayed his trust, Looked but on virtue as the toy for vice, Now learns the name he leaves to time and God! But the work is very unequal. There are passages in this drama which are not only unworthy of Mr. Bulwer's reputation, but which we are surprised could have escaped the pen of any writer whose judgment was not utterly overborne by the caprices of his fancy. We find an example of this species of mere rhodomontade in the soliloquy of Bragelone, after he has succeeded in prevailing on Louise to take the veil—an historical untruth, but a good stage incident. A never-heard philosopher is Life! Our happiest hours are sleep's;-and sleep proclaims, Did we but listen to its warning voice, That REST is earth's elixir! Why, then, pine That, ere our years grow feverish with their toil, 'Too weary-worn to find the rest they [the years?] sigh for, We learn betimes THE MORAL OF REPOSE? I will lie down, and sleep away this world. "Sleep's sweetest taken soonest!" Which piece of information, to be ob tained from the labourer, is a palpable plagiarism from the good old adage. Early to bed, Early to rise, Makes a man healthy, Wealthy, and wise! We beg of the reader to analyse the whole of this passage, if it were for no other purpose than to assure himself of the skill with which a quantity of words can be put together, and subdivided into heroic lines, without containing a single grain of sense. The confusion of images is almost without a parallel the elixir and the moral of repose the sleeping away the world-the lateness of the night-the gilding of the “brief sun”—the falling of chill silence over the music upon the leaves of life, when the fluttering hopes that used to sing such pretty songs are gone to roost-are dug up from the lowest depths of bathos. But such faults are less censurable than the grand moral of the drama. It is in this that Mr. Bulwer has placed himself beyond the pale of clemency: his meretricious and silken absurdities may be excused, but what apology can be offered for an attempt to redeem the character of Louise de la Vallière, and elevate her into a stage heroine? |