voked to the sphere where they ought to have moved, in this verbose tragedy. The spell of Thomson's enchantment seems to be broken the moment he enters on the drama; he had cultivated his genius into a rich, soft soil, too luxuriant for dramatic poetry. The main issue of the plot of "Tancred" depends on the father of Sigismunda, Siffredi, whose inconsistency is enough to spoil a better tragedy. At first, the old chancellor of Sicily is all self-denial and conscientiousness, the beau ideal of political morality. So far so good; but he turns out an inhuman father, a false guardian, and a legal swindler. He has taken Prince Tancred into his house, and, after causing his attachment to his daughter by domestication, he chooses rather to break both their hearts than his own political views for the good of Sicily. In a heated moment Tancred gives Sigismunda a carte blanche, with his signature. The old lawyer, with a treachery unworthy of the lowest attorney, gets this paper from his daughter, and fills it up with a promise on the part of Tancred that he will marry Constantia, the daughter of his father's murderer. In Poetry, the feigned description of improbable animals is as susceptible of detection as in Natural History, and such a medley of morality and mischief as Siffredi, probably never existed in nature. Mrs. Siddons concluded her second season the 13th of May, 1784, with a sixth performance of Belvidera. Between the 8th of October and this last night she acted fifty-three times, that is, allowing for the oratorios in Lent, nearly once in every three nights of the company's performance. Isabella and Mrs. Beverley were her most frequent characters. Before the end of the season Mr. and Mrs. Siddons left their lodgings, in the Strand, and took and furnished a comfortable house, in Gower street, and she now returned the visits of her friends in her own carriage. I shall now recur to the few Recollections of her Life which Mrs. Siddons has left me in her own writing. My last quotation from them ended with her description of her reception in Isabella. As her Memoranda are resumed at that point, they necessarily refer to some circumstances belonging to the history of her first But as she almost immediately passes into recollections of her second season, and as I wished to break upon the continuity of her Memoranda as little as possible, I postponed what I now quote from them to the end of my account of her professional appearances season. in 1783-4. |