field-many idoloclasts, who will expose the signs of disease, which zealots had interpreted as power; and of weakness, which is not the less real because scholars had fancied it health, nor the less injurious to the total effect because it was inevitable under the accidents of the Grecian position. strange,) even sycophancy, in the old undistin- | are destined to totter: and I foresee, without gifts of guishing homage to all that is called classical. prophecy, that many labourers will soon be in this Yet why should men be sycophants in cases where they must be disinterested? Sycophancy grows out of fear, or out of mercenary self-interest. But what can there exist of either pointing to an old Greek poet? Cannot a man give his free opinion upon Homer, without fearing to be waylaid by his ghost? But it is not that which startles him from publishing the secret demur which his heart prompts, upon hearing false praises of a Greek poet, or praises which, if not false, are extravagant. What he fears, is the scorn of his contemporaries. Let once a party have formed itself considerable enough to protect a man from the charge of presumption in throwing off the yoke of servile allegiance to all that is called classical, let it be a party ever so small numerically, and the rebels will soon be many. What a man fears is, to affront the whole storm of indignation, real and affected, in his own solitary person. "Goth!" "Vandal!" he hears from every side. Break that storm by dividing it, and he will face its anger. "Let me be a Goth," he mutters to himself, "but let me not dishonour myself by affecting an enthusiasm which my heart rejects! Ever since the restoration of letters there has been a cabal, an academic interest, a factious league amongst universities, and learned bodies, and individual scholars, for exalting as something superterrestrial, and quite unapproachable by moderns, the monuments of Greek literature. France, in the time of Louis XIV., England, in the latter part of that time; in fact, each country as it grew polished at some cost of strength, carried this craze to a dangerous excess-dangerous as all things false are dangerous, and depressing to the aspirations of genius. Boileau, for instance, and Addison, though neither of them accomplished in scholarship, nor either of them extensively read in any department of the classic literature, speak every where of the classics as having notoriously, and by the general confession of polished nations, carried the functions of poetry and eloquence to that sort of faultless beauty which probably does really exist in the Greek sculpture. There are few things perfect in this world of frailty. Even lightning is sometimes a failure: Niagara has horrible faults; and Mont Blanc might be improved by a century of chiselling from judicious artists. Such are the works of blind elements, which, (poor things!) cannot improve by experience. As to man who does, the sculpture of the Greeks in their marbles and sometimes in their gems, seems the only act of his workmanship which has hit the bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming. Not so, with permission from Messrs. Boileau and Addison, the Greek literature. The faults in this are often conspicuous; nor are they likely to be hidden for the coming century, as they have been for the three last. The idolatry will be shaken: as idols, some of the classic models Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing whatever, or to turn the eye upon blemishes, is no part of my present purpose. Nor could it be : since the one sole section of the Greek literature, as to which I profess myself an enthusiast, happens to be the tragic drama; and here, only, I myself am liable to be challenged as an idolater. As regards the Antigone in particular, so profoundly do I feel the impassioned beauty of her situation in connexion with her character, that long ago, in a work of my own, (yet unpublished,) having occasion, (by way of overture introducing one of the sections,) to cite before the reader's eye the chief pomps of the Grecian theatre, after invoking "the magnificent witch" Medea, I call up Antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe, "Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was known,† flower from Paradise after Paradise was closed; that quitting all things for which flesh languishes, safety and honour, a palace and a home, didst make thyself a houseless pariah, lest the poor pariah king, thy outcast father, should want a hand to lead him in his darkness, or a voice to whisper comfort in his misery; angel, that badst depart for ever the glories of thy own bridal day, lest he that had shared thy nursery in childhood, should want the honours of a funeral ; idolatrous, yet Christian Lady, that in the spirit of martyrdom trodst alone the yawning billows of the grave, flying from earthly hopes, lest everlasting despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother," &c. In fact, though all the groupings, and what I would call permanent attitudes of the Grecian stage, are majestic, there is none that, to my mind, towers into such affecting grandeur, as this final revelation, through Antigone herself, and through her own dreadful death, of the tremendous wo that destiny had suspended over her house. If therefore my business had been chiefly with the individual drama, I should have found little room for any sentiment but that of profound admiration. But my present business is different: it concerns the Greek drama generally, and the attempt to revive it; and its object is to elucidate, rather than to praise or to blame. To explain this better, I will describe two things:1st, The sort of audience that I suppose myself to be addressing; and, 2dly, As growing out of that, the particular quality of the explanations which I wish to make. * Boileau, it is true, translated Longinus. But there goes little Greek to that. It is in dealing with Attic Greek, and Attic poets, that a man can manifest his Grecian skill. +"Before God was known ;"-i.e, known in Greece. find on other subjects. They are too honourable to undervalue advantages, which they feel to be considerable, simply because they were denied to themselves. They regret their loss. And yet it seems hardly worth while, on a simple prospect of contingencies that may never be realized, to undertake an entirely new course of study for redressing this loss. But they would be glad to avail themselves of any useful information not exacting study. These are the persons, this is the class, to which I address my remarks on the " Antigone; and out of their particular situation, suggesting upon all elevated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curiosity, will arise the particular nature and direction of these remarks. it to be understood, that I take that station deliberately, on no conceit of superiority to my readers, but as a companion adapting my services to the wants of those who need them. I am not addressing those already familiar with the Greek drama, but those who frankly confess, and (according to their conjectural appreciation of it) who regret their non-familiarity with that drama. It is a thing well known to publishers, through remarkable results, and is now showing itself on a scale continually widening, that a new literary public has arisen, very different from any which existed at the beginning of this century. The aristocracy of the land have always been, in a moderate degree, literary; less, however, in connexion with the current literature, than with Accordingly, I presume, secondly, that this literature generally-past as well as present. And curiosity will take the following course :-these this is a tendency naturally favoured and strength- persons will naturally wish to know, at starting, ened in them, by the fine collections of books, what there is differentially interesting in a Grecian carried forward through successive generations, tragedy, as contrasted with one of Shakspere's, which are so often found as a sort of hereditary or of Schiller's: in what respect, and by what foundation in the country mansions of our nobility. agencies, a Greek tragedy affects us, or is meant But a class of readers, prodigiously more extensive, to affect us, otherwise than as they do; and how has formed itself within the commercial orders of far the Antigone of Sophocles was judiciously our great cities and manufacturing districts. These chosen as the particular medium for conveying to orders range through a large scale. The highest British minds a first impression, and a representatamongst them were always literary. But tive impression, of Greek tragedy. So far, in relathe interest of literature has now swept down- tion to the ends proposed, and the means selected. wards through a vast compass of descents: and Finally, these persons will be curious to know the this large body, though the busiest in the nation, issue of such an experiment. Let the purposes yet, by having under their undisturbed command and the means have been bad or good, what was such leisure time as they have at all under their the actual success? And not merely success, in command, are eventually able to read more than the sense of the momentary acceptance by half a those even who seem to have nothing else but dozen audiences, whom the mere decencies of jusleisure. In justice, however, to the nobility of tice must have compelled to acknowledge the our land, it should be remembered, that their manager's trouble and expense on their behalf; stations in society, and their wealth, their terri- but what was the degree of satisfaction felt by torial duties, and their various public duties in students of the Athenian* tragedy, in relation to London, as at court, at public meetings, in parlia- their long-cherished ideal? Did the representament, &c. bring crowded claims upon their time; tion succeed in realizing, for a moment, the awful whilst even sacrifices of time to the graceful cour-pageant of the Athenian stage? Did Tragedy, in tesies of life, are, in reference to their stations, a Milton's immortal expression, sort of secondary duties. These allowances made, it still remains true that the busier classes are the One main reading classes; whilst from their immense come sweeping by In sceptred pall? Or was the whole, though successful in relation to the thing attempted, a failure in relation to what ought to have been attempted? Such are the questions to be answered. The first elementary idea of a Greek tragedy, is to be sought in a serious Italian opera. The Greek dialogue is represented by the recitative, and the tumultuous lyrical parts assigned chiefly, though not exclusively, to the chorus on the Greek stage, are represented by the impassioned airs, duos, trios, choruses, &c. on the Italian. And here, at the very outset, occurs a question which lies at the threshold of a Fine Art,—that is, of any Fine Art: for had the views of Addison upon the Italian opera had the least foundation in truth, there could have been no room or opening for any At times, I say pointedly, the Athenian rather than the Grecian tragedy, in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a remark made by Paterculus,-viz. That although Greece coquettishly welcomed homage to herself, as generally concerned in the Greek literature, in reality Athens only had any original share in the drama, or in the oratory of Greece, mode of imitation except such as belongs to a worst objection in the world to say, that the strife mechanic art. The reason for at all connecting Addison with this case is, that he chiefly was the person occupied in assailing the Italian opera; and this hostility arose, probably, in his want of sensibility to good (that is, to Italian) music. But whatever might be his motive for the hostility, the single argument by which he supported it was this, that a hero ought not to sing upon the stage, because no hero known to history ever summoned a garrison in a song, or charged a battery in a semichorus. In this argument lies an ignorance of the very first principle concerned in every Fine Art. In all alike, more or less directly, the object is to reproduce in the mind some great effect, through the agency of idem in alio. The idem, the same impression, is to be restored; but in alio, in a different material,-by means of some different instrument. For instance, on the Roman stage there was an art, now entirely lost, of narrating, and, in part, of dramatically representing an impassioned tale, by means of dancing, of musical accompaniment in the orchestra, and of elaborate pantomime in the performer. Saltavit Hypermnestram, he danced (that is, he represented by dancing and pantomime the story of) Hypermnestra. Now, suppose a man to object, that young ladies, when saving their youthful husbands at midnight from assassination, could not be capable of waltzing or quadrilling, how wide is this of the whole problem! This is still seeking for the mechanic imitation, some imitation founded in the very fact; whereas the object is to seek the imitation in the sameness of the impression drawn from a different, or even from an impossible fact. If a man, taking a hint from the Roman "Saltatio," (saltavit Andromachen,) should say that he would "whistle Waterloo," that is, by whistling connected with pantomime, would express the passion and the changes of Waterloo, it would be monstrous to refuse him his postulate on the pretence that "people did not whistle at Waterloo." Precisely so neither are most people made of marble, but of a material as different as can well be imagined, viz. of elastic flesh, with warm blood coursing along its tubes; and yet, for all that, a sculptor will draw tears from you, by exhibiting, in pure statuary marble, on a sepulchral monument, two young children with their little heads on a pillow, sleeping in each other's arms; whereas, if he had presented them in wax-work, which yet is far more like to flesh, you would have felt little more pathos in the scene than if they had been shown baked in gilt gingerbread. He has expressed the idem, the identical thing expressed in the real children; the sleep that masques death, the rest, the peace, the purity, the innocence: but in alio, in a substance the most different; rigid, nonelastic, and as unlike to flesh, if tried by touch, or eye, or by experience of life, as can well be imagined. So of the whistling. It is the very of Waterloo did not reveal itself through whistling: undoubtedly it did not ; but that is the very ground of the man's art. He will reproduce the fury and the movement as to the only point which concerns you, viz. the effect, upon your own sympathies, through a language that seems without any relation to it: he will set before you what was at Waterloo through that which was not at Waterloo. Whereas any direct factual imitation, resting upon painted figures drest up in regimentals, and worked by watchwork through the whole movements of the battle, would have been no art whatsoever in the sense of a Fine Art, but a base mechanic mimicry. This principle of the idem in alio, so widely diffused through all the higher revelations of art, it is peculiarly requisite to bear in mind when looking at Grecian tragedy, because no form of human composition employs it in so much complexity. How confounding it would have been to Addison, if somebody had told him, that, substantially, he had himself committed the offence (as he fancied it) which he charged so bitterly upon the Italian opera; and that, if the opera had gone farther upon that road than himself, the Greek tragedy, which he presumed to be so prodigiously exalted beyond modern approaches, had gone farther even than the opera. Addison himself, when writing a tragedy, made this violation (as he would have said) of nature, made this concession (as I should say) to a higher nature, that he compelled his characters to talk in metre. It is true this metre was the common iambic, which (as Aristotle remarks) is the most natural and spontaneous of all metres; and, for a sufficient reason, in all languages. Certainly; but Aristotle never meant to say that it was natural for a gentleman in a passion to talk three score and ten iambics consecutively: a chance line might escape him once and away; as we know that Tacitus opened one of his works by a regular dactylic hexameter in full curl, without ever discovering it to his dying day, (a fact which is clear from his never having corrected it ;) and this being a very artificial metre, a fortiori Tacitus might have slipped into a simple iambic. But that was an accident, whilst Addison had deliberately and uniformly made his characters talk in verse. According to the common and false meaning [which was his own meaning] of the word nature, he had as undeniably violated the principle of the natural, by this metrical dialogue, as the Italian opera by musical dialogue. If it is hard and trying for men to sing their emotions, not less so it must be to deliver them in verse. But, if this were shocking, how much more shocking would it have seemed to Addison, had he been introduced to parts which really exist in the Grecian drama? Even Sophocles, who, of the three tragic poets surviving from the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is reputed the supreme artist,* "The supreme artist: "It is chiefly by comparison with Euripides, that Sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels of art. But there is some danger of doing wrong to the truth in too blindly adhering to these old rulings of critical courts. The judgments would sometimes be reversed, if the pleadings were before us. There were blockheads in those days. Undoubtedly it is past denying that Euripides at times betrays marks of carelessness in the structure of his plots, as if writing if not the most impassioned poet, with what horror he would have overwhelmed Addison, when read by the light of those principles which he had himself so scornfully applied to the opera! In the very monsoon of his raving misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irredeemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, but conversing in metre ; not only in metre, but in the most elaborate of choral metres ; not only under the torture of these lyric difficulties, but also chaunting; not only chaunting, but also in all probability dancing. What do you think of that, Mr. Addison? There is, in fact, a scale of graduated ascents in these artifices for unrealizing the effects of dramatic situations: 1. We may see, even in novels and prose comedies, a keen attention paid to the inspiriting and dressing of the dialogue: it is meant to be life-like, but still it is a little raised, pointed, coloured, and idealized. 2. In comedy of a higher and more poetic cast, we find the dialogue metrical. 3. In comedy or in tragedy alike, which is meant to be still further removed from ordinary life, we find the dialogue fettered not only by metre, but by rhyme. We need not go to Dryden, and others, of our own middle stage, or to the French stage for this: even in Shakspere, as for example, in parts of Romeo and Juliet, (and for no capricious purpose,) we may see effects sought from the use of rhyme. There is another illustration of the idealizing effect to be obtained from a particular treatment of the dialogue, seen in the Hamlet of Shakspere. In that drama there arises a necessity for exhibiting a play within a play. This interior drama is to be further removed from the spectator than the principal drama; it is a deep below a deep; and, to produce that effect, the poet relies chiefly upon the stiffening the dialogue, and removing it still farther, than the general dialogue of the including or outside drama, from the standard of ordinary life. 4. We find, superadded to these artifices for idealizing the situations, even music of an intermitting character, sometimes less, sometimes more impassioned-recitatives, airs, choruses. Here we have reached the Italian opera. sparingly and too capriciously scattered by Milton,) and, 4th, singing or chaunting these metres, (for, as the chorus sang, it was impossible that he could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice, else he would have put them out, and ruined the music.) Finally, 5th, I am satisfied that Milton meant him to dance. The office of the chorus was imperfectly defined upon the Greek stage. They are generally understood to be the moralizers of the scene. But this is liable to exceptions. Some of them have been known to do very bad things on the stage, and to come within a trifle of felony as to misprision of felony, if there is such a crime, a Greek chorus thinks nothing of it. But that is. no business of mine. What I was going to say is, that, as the chorus sometimes intermingles too much in the action, so the actors sometimes intermingle in the business of the chorus. Now, when you are at Rome, you must do as they do at Rome. And that the actor, who mixed with the chorus, was compelled to sing, is a clear case; for his part in the choral ode is always in the nature of an echo, or answer, or like an antiphony in cathedral services. But nothing could be more absurd than that one of these antiphonies should be sung, and another said. That he was also compelled to dance, I am satisfied. The chorus only sometimes moralized, but it always danced: and any actor, mingling with the chorus, must dance also. A little incident occurs to my remembrance, from the Moscow expedition of 1812, which may here be used as an illustration: One day King Murat, flourishing his plumage as usual, made a gesture of invitation to some squadrons of cavalry that they should charge the enemy: upon which the cavalry advanced, but maliciously contrived to envelope the king of dandies, before he had time to execute his ordinary manœuvre of riding off to the left and becoming a spectator of their prowess. The cavalry resolved that his majesty should for once ride down at their head to the melée, and taste what fighting was like; and he, finding that the thing must be, though horribly vexed, made a merit of his necessity, and afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other misanthropic visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their méchanceté, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now I conceive that any interloper into the Greek chorus must have danced when they danced, or he would have been swept away by their impetus: nolens volens, he must have rode along with the orchestral charge, he must have rode on the crest of the choral billows, or he would have been rode down by their impassioned sweep. Samson, and Edipus, and others, must have danced, if they sang; and they certainly did sing, by notoriously intermingling in the choral business.* 5. And, finally, besides all these resources of art, we find dancing introduced; but dancing of a solemn, mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, we have reached the Greek tragedy. Probably the best exemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever will be given to a modern reader is found in the Samson Agonistes of Milton. Now, in the choral or lyric parts of this fine drama, Samson not only talks, 1st, metrically, (as he does every where, and in the most level parts of the scenic business,) but, 2d, in very intricate metres, and, 3d, occasionally in rhymed metres, (though the rhymes are too too much in a hurry: the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and the evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see that he would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or diaskeue [diaantun.] On the other hand, I remember nothing in the Greek drama more worthy of a great artist than parts in his Phoenissae. Neither is he the effeminately tender, or merely pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to sweep all the chords of the impassioned spirit. But the whole of this subject is in arrear: it is in fact res integra, almost unbroken ground. "But now," says the plain English reader, "what was the object of all these elaborate devices? * I see a possible screw loose at this point: if you see it, reader, have the goodness to hold your tongue. And how came it that the English tragedy, which surely is as good as the Greek," (and at this point a devil of defiance whispers to him, like the quarrelsome servant of the Capulets or the Montagus, "say better,")" that the English tragedy contented itself with fewer of these artful resources than the Athenian?" I reply, that the object of all these things was-to unrealize the scene. The English drama, by its metrical dress, and by other arts more disguised, unrealized itself, liberated itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary standards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise still higher, and why the Grecian did, I will endeavour to explain. It was not that the English tragedy was less impassioned; on the contrary, it was far more so; the Greek being awful rather than impassioned; but the passion of each is in a different key. It is not again that the Greek drama sought a lower object than the English: it sought a different object. It is not imparity, but disparity, that divides the two magnificent theatres. (To be concluded in next Number.) LINES TO A MOTHERLESS BABE ASLEEP. HUSH, hush, he sleeps! Oh! softly tread, Sleep on, dear baby boy ! Oh, watch the roseate tints that play What are thy thoughts untouch'd with guile, Have they now stray'd to that land where Or, doth her spirit hover round, And guard thy sleep with all the care Oh may thy heart, in after years, When all was brightly round her beaming, Meekly that angel soul obey'd, And drank the bitter cup so young; Sleep on, sweet babe! the child of prayer JENNY BASKET; AN AMERICAN ROMANCE. BY COLONEL JOHNSON. (Continued from Page 774 of our December Number.) E. C. M'C. WE left the foresters, and their more civilized | waves or the current gave motion to the vessel. friends, reunited after a temporary separation, which had caused the latter much fear that they were abandoned and left exposed to the vengeance of the Iroquois, who were in hot pursuit. The whole party were now placed in bark canoes, with strict orders from Shenandoah that no one on board should change his position, or rise up, whatever might occur to them on their passage. And indeed, whoever has attempted to navigate a bark canoe, will perceive the good sense of the chieftain's injunctions. Of all water-craft, these frail, rocking barques are most difficult to be kept right side up. Even a sailor is not safe in stepping into one of them, unless he has been previously initiated into the secret of their management. A ropedancer is not required to balance with more skill than is the successful navigator of the bark canoe. And yet, strange to tell, Indians have frequently been seen in the act of throwing their fishing | spears, and ascending water-falls, so to balance themselves in this tiny vessel, that their lank forms were projecting over the canoe on the one side, and then on the other, keeping the canoe in the mean time steadily skimming the tide, while the navigator appeared like a mast hung by a swivel, making fantastic sweeps in the air, as the In one of these canoes were placed Miss Stirling and her brother Charles; while Shenandoah and Robert Brown managed the oars. The other had Mr. Asbury and old Nanny; Cudjoe and the young Englishman doing the rowing. And in this way they moved up the river. When day dawned upon these navigators, they were several miles up the Hudson from the place of embarcation. In the afternoon of that day, as the canoes approached the western bank of the river, where a thick clump of pines skirted the shore, the report of a rifle in Cudjoe's hands was followed by the bounding of a noble moose from the water's edge into the stream, just before their frail barques. The blood spouted from the nostrils of the wounded animal, dying the waters, as he baffled them and swam in maddening fury towards the canoes. Shenandoah and his squire, the masters of their respective crafts, ceased rowing, clenching their oars firmly in their hands, and waiting with coolness the approach of the frenzied animal; well knowing that it required the utmost skill of a forester to prevent capsizing, should he attack the barques. The moose swam directly toward Shenandoah's canoe, that being nearest the shore; and his approach was so violent and desperate, that Stirling, alarmed for the safety of himself and |