From our ignorance of conversational Greek, we are insensible to much of what was doubtless colloquial in Eschylus; but there are not a few passages on which we could unhesitatingly pronounce, because the ideas themselves are trivial and colloquial. Corneille, however, with all his faults was a giant, and took a giant's stride in advance of his contemporaries, and is justly considered the father of the tragic style in France. His improvements were poetical rather than scenical. He made the language more suitable to the expression of serious thoughts; enriched it with many new turns; gave life and vigour to the feeble and contemptible imitations of the classic model then in vogue, and by the force of passion, rhetoric, and concentrated energy, made that form of drama truly national. He is not to be regarded as a great dramatist, in our Shakspearian sense of the term: but some of his scenes approach perfection, and have never been surpassed. He has astonishing vigour and a daring spirit. He is sublime, but it is in sudden flashes, not in steady conceptions. Some of his brief sentences startled the audience into rapture, flashing like lightning; but they were as flashes which for a moment illumine the dark night, not the steady harmonious light of a sun irradiating and suffusing with a poetical glow every corner of the piece. He wants that which all early dramatists wanted, the power of characterization. To return to Marlowe: the English stage | Voltaire, in his valuable commentary, has owes much to him, but he had many con- noticed many examples of this familiarity of temporaries who share with him the honour expression; but there are many which aud trouble of forming a drama out of the escaped his lynx-eyed criticism. materials at hand. But the adoption of blank verse, and the rythmical improvements which he introduced, must not be passed over in silence. Although by no means the first to use blank verse, Marlowe was the first who steadily persevered in his dramatic employment. We refer to Mr. Collier (vol. iii., pp. 127—146) for the proofs; we refer to him, moreover, for the sake of noticing his extraordinary misconception of Shakspeare's versification, which he attempts to show was founded upon that of Marlowe, with little alteration. Marlowe,' he says, 'introduced such varieties of pause, inflection, and modulation, as left our great dramatists little more to do than follow his example.' Mr. Collier when he wrote this had not edited Shakspeare, or he would hardly, we think, have ventured so singular an assertion. Every reader knows that Marlowe's versification has a 'princely monotony;' that the sense ends almost with every line, and that redundancies are sparing; redundancies occur, as also deficiencies, but they are so few as to be noticed only on minute examination. The general impression is that of weighty regularity in the structure of the verse. Shakspeare, on the contrary, gives you the impression of inexhaustible variety. The lines run freely over into each other; redundancies are frequent: lines of twelve, thirteen, and even fourteen syllables not unfrequently occurring. Another distinction: in Marlowe there is a monotony in the length and pauses of his verse, with great irregularity in the metre: he employs almost as many trochees and dactyls as iambics; Shakspeare has great varieties in length and pauses, with comparatively a rigid employment of the iambic metre. Marlowe, however, is fairly entitled to the honour of having materially improved our blank verse, and having in spite of ridicule, fixed it as the dramatic verse. We reserve our remarks on Marlowe's want of dramatic characterization, till we come to Corneille's want of the same power. The father of French tragedy was Corneille, who also exhibits the same characteristics as Eschylus and Marlowe : sublimity, bombast, triviality, and want of art. Corneille is often familiar, but seldom naïf. Not only does his language too much resemble, on occasions, the language of comedy, but, as Voltaire remarks, the poets of that day did not distinguish between the simple and the familiar, 'le simple est necessaire, le familier ne peut être souffert.' The characters in Corneille are vrais, perhaps, but not vraisemblables; we cannot say they are unnatural, but neither can we say that he has made them natural. Without denying that the opposite passions, which he depicts as co-existent in the same breast, may and often do exist, we absolutely deny that he has made their coexistence credible. Owing to the absence of those subtle links which connect opposite passions, as bridges thrown over vast chasms, Cinna is by turns heroic and contemptible, a patriot, a hero, a hypocrite, and a driveller. Emile, whom Balzac (not Honoré de) calls an adorable fury,' has a considerable portion of the 'fury,' and none of the 'adorable.' The contending passions of love and filial duty which agitate Chimène are undoubtedly real; but they do not affect us as if they were real; we do not sympathize with her in the struggle, because we do not see it going on in her heart; there is no fusion of opposing passions, consequently no truth. It is quite natural for a woman both to hate and love the same man; to hate him with plexity and appalling reality, belongs to the poets of the second epoch,-Sophocles, Shakspeare, and Racine. Before quitting the poets of the first epoch, let us remark how they resemble each other not only in cast of thought, language, and characterization, but also in the warlike spirit which pervades their works. a hate as deadly as her love is deep: for this hate is nothing but a wounded, bleeding love, stung with the sense of wrong and blind with intolerable grief. But to portray these contending feelings is a difficult task, requiring subtle knowledge and a delicate pencil. Racin did it, in Hermione,' to perfection. Corneille attempted it in Chimène,' only to make the contradiction glar- If in pursuing our historical review we ing. The point we speak of is important. call Cervantes the Eschylus of Spain, it This talent for portraying the minute links must be understood as expressive rather of of motive and passion constitutes the great his position than of the nature of his genius. dramatist. Eschylus had none of it; Mar-The dramatic powers of the author of Don lowe had none of it; Corneille had none of Quixote were unquestionably of the highest it. The Choëphora' of Eschylus may be order. Nevertheless, his dramas have but compared with the Electra' of Sophocles, scanty merit. He possessed all the qualities. the Edward II.' of Marlowe with the which make a writer great: style, pathos, 'Richard II.' of Shakspeare, and the Cid' humour, knowledge of life, and mastery in of Corneille with the Andromaque' of Ra- the portrayal of character. He stands alone, cine, by the student desirous of clearly per- not merely in his country, but in his art. ceiving the nature of the two epochs in But his warmest admirers must confess that dramatic art. A distinction has been made his dramas are as unworthy of him, as the between that 'Ideal which is a faint reflexRape of Lucrece' is unworthy the author of the God-like,' and that which is the of Othello.' The boasted tragedy of Nu'highest point of humanity;' in other words, mancia' is a rudis indigestaque moles,' the ideal is sometimes that which imagina- with occasional glimpses of pathos and tion conceives as superior to man, and at poetry. Bouterwek supposes that Cervantes others the superiority of humanity. Eschy-had real genius for the drama, but, 'could lus and Sophocles embody these two meanings of ideality. The one paints abstractions and demigods; the other, men. The one has a hardness and nakedness outline; the other fills up his outlines with perfect lights and shadows, and delicate tints. Let us for a moment glance at their manner of handling the same subject. Clytemnestra, in Eschylus, hears of the death of her son Orestes without exhibiting the least emotion; not merely is the mother stifled in her heart, the guilty woman is not even moved; she neither feels sorrow for her child nor joy at her security. Yet these contending passions are eminently appropriate to the situation, and Sophocles avails himself of them: his Clytemnestra expresses both feelings, both acutely. It is, indeed, curious to notice the absence of all human feeling in the 'Choëphorae.' Neither Orestes nor Electra are moved with the least filial recollection. Hate, unmixed with pity, unmixed even with the recollections of maternal kindness, of the ties of blood, hate dark, settled, and implacable, alone moves them. And this hate seems, on the part of Orestes, less Cervantes, though a poor dramatist, was grounded in abhorrence at his mother's to a certain extent the father of the Spanish crimes, or in pity for his father's fate, than drama, and in his works we see, as in Esin the imposing command of the oracle, chylus, Marlowe, and Corneille, a vigour which he fears to disobey. The Germans, and grandeur in certain passages, with an probably, find some very profound philo-intensity of pathos which cannot be too sophical meaning in all this; meanwhile, we highly admired; we see also the familiarity may say that nothing can be less dramatic. and bombast peculiar to early dramatists. To portray passion, in its wondrous com-He introduced a new kind of tragic drama not preserve his independence in the conflict he had to maintain with the conditions required by the Spanish public; and when he sacrificed his independence and submitted to the rules of others, his invention and language were reduced to the level of an inferior poet. The intrigues, adventures, and surprises which in that age characterized the drama, were ill-suited to the genius of Cervantes. His natural style was too profound and precise to be reconciled to fantastical ideas expressed in irregular verse. But he was Spaniard enough to be gratified with dramas which, as a poet, he could not imitate; and he imagined himself capable of imitating them because he would have shone in another species of dramatic composition had the public taste accommodated itself to his genius.' This is a similar defence to that erected for Shakspeare's poems. We incline, however to the belief that Cervantes did not attain dramatic excellence because his genius was not developed till late in life, when he had long relinquished the writing of plays. which was so perfectly in accordance with land, less perfectly by Marlowe, Shakspeare, the national taste that it became the fixed and Fletcher; in Spain, still less so by form. Torres de Naharro had fixed the Cervantes, Lope de Vega, or Calderon, and form of comedy; Cervantes fixed that of Moreto. With the exception of the Spanish tragedy. writers, the progress was in all these poets With Alfieri there was a vigorous attempt the same in kind, as also was the decline; to create a drama in Italy; but although a the reason of this exception we shall hereafman of powerful dramatic talent, and al- ter explain. In Sophocles, Shakspeare, and though his plays have had immense influence Racine, the sternness, ruggedness, grandeur, on his nation, are still acted, still admired, bombast, triviality, and scanty outlines of yet the attempt has proved abortive. There their predecessors were replaced by beauty have been no followers to complete what he and harmonious completeness. They rebegan. Monti, Niccolini, and the rest, are ceived a Cyclopean fragment, bold, but unbut feeble copyists of Alfieri. Opera has shapely; in their hands it became a Phidian become the national drama. Germany has statue, the ideal of harmonious proportion. been late in establishing a drama; and in The Titan became a man. Art gained in spite of the ability there occasionally be- depth what it lost in terror. The Titan, no stowed upon it, we cannot on the whole re- doubt, was a grand, daring being, vast in gard it as at all equal to that of Greece, size, indomitable in will; but compared to England, Spain, and France. Göthe's is man, wondrous in intelligence, inexhaustible doubtless a great name, but its lustre does in affection, this Titan was insignificant. not come from the drama. Schiller was un- It may be paradoxical, but it is neverthequestionably a man of rare talents; but both less true, that the greatness of a poet is Göthe and Schiller contented themselves shown rather in small things than in great; with being translators, and in some sort these small things being only small in apimitators of the plays of Greece, England, pearance. The minute springs of character, and France. A national drama they did not the involuntary demonstrations of feeling, attempt. Lessing and Kotzebue in some the sudden glimpses of the heart, are ten measure attempted it. The bürgerliche times more difficult to portray than the Trauerspiele, the sentimental dramas such general expressions and the open manifestaas Minna von Barnhelm' and 'Menschen- tions of headlong passion. To paint a demihass und Reue,' are of course miserably in- god requires only imagination; to paint a ferior to Tasso,' 'Clavigo,' 'Fiesco,' and man requires far other powers. It is com'Die Jungfrau von Orleans,' in point of paratively easy to make characters great, poetic beauty, in point of literary interest; imposing, even terrible scarcely one man but we suspect that in this species lay the germ of a real national drama, for it was the expression of the national character. If it was a real germ, it was completely buried beneath a host of imitations, historical tragedies, fate tragedies, romantic tragedies, and art tragedies, which have been produced with sterile abundance; German tragedies are unknown. Italy and Germany do not afford the same illustrations of that process of development which we have traced in the other countries; but they give negative evidence of almost equal value. The imitative drama, being always a spurious thing, has not been regulated by the same laws as those of natural development. in a century can make them true. We may say the same of style; imagery is given to many, but that peculiar beauty which consists in the selection of the best images and the best expressions, which preserves the style equally from prosaisms and gaudy ornaments, which gives the thought all its real beauty and no more, in a word simplicity as distinct from boldness, is the rarest and greatest of qualities in a writer. The most striking improvements effected by the three poets we are now to consider, are precisely in the above qualities. They made their characters more human, and their style more chaste. Sophocles, in a very important passage preserved by PluThe third portion of our historical review tarch, speaks of his having emancipated himis now to invite attention. The drama self from the pomp (öyzor) of Eschylus, and having been created, as we saw, we have at length attained that style which was the now to trace its progress till it reaches a best for the expression of character (neg climax of perfection and then to observe its ἐστὶν ἠθικιότατον καὶ βέλτιστον. This conveys gradual decline. In Greece, the three the best idea of his aim in poetry; and epochs of formation, perfection, and decline, when he said that 'Eschylus did right withare felicitously represented by the only three out knowing it,' he clearly enough indicated remaining tragedians, Eschylus, Sophocles, the critical nature of his own genius. He and Euripides; in France equally so by was in truth a very critical poet; but critiCorneille, Racine, and Voltaire; in Eng-cal in the largest sense. In the fulness of his knowledge he knew what was the best, cessant admiration. For severe simplicity and he executed what he knew. There are in the economy of materials this play is a persons who prefer Aschylus to Sophocles, model for all dramatists; nothing is superthere are others at a loss to award a prefer- fluous, nothing thrown away. ence; we have not to settle such questions The drama, as we saw, began when symhere, but we have to settle the question of bols and allegories gave place to human chahistorical development, and in this sense we racters, when instead of a virtue or a vice, must award the superiority to Sophocles, a virtuous or vicious man was represented. who unquestionably carried the drama on- The drama reached its climax when human wards. He not only invented a third ac- character was represented in its inner secret tor, which, of course, gave greater opportu- phases, and not merely in its external acts. nities for dramatic complexity; but he put This is accomplished, in different degrees of a new spirit into tragedy. The passions in course, by Sophocles, Shakspeare, and RaEschylus are indicated rather than delinea- cine. These poets were all distinguished ted; extremely simple and elementary, they by the epithet of gentleness; the Attic have no fluctuations, no subtleties. The Bee,' the 'tendre Racine,' and 'Shakspeare passions in Sophocles are dramatic, they bland and mild," and to them we may add have their flux and reflux, their contradic- the 'gentle Raphael,' who stands in a simitions and subtleties; above all they are nat-lar relation to Michael Angelo as Sophocles ural.* In Eschylus they are almost ab- does to Eschylus. This gentleness is in no stractions. It is from this, we believe, that way incompatible with the manliest strength; Müller asserted that the masks with their and those critics who prefer Corneille to uniform expressions suited the uniformity of Racine on the ground of superior strength, passions in ancient tragedy, wherein the mistake spasms for force. Racine is strongprincipal persons once forcibly impressed by er than Corneille, because wider and deeper. certain objects and emotions, appeared The general tenour of his verse, indeed, is through the whole remaining piece in a state sweet and gentle, but he can be terrible at of mind which was become the habitual and will; he can be bitter and more intense than fundamental character of their existence."This rugged rival. So, also, Sophocles is, on He applies this to Sophocles as to Eschy- occasions, more terrible than schylus. lus; yet surely his memory must have mis- The Attic Bee carries a sting. The womanlyled him here? The fluctuations of feeling wicked Clytemnestra is more terrific than which occur in the scene between Creon and the fiendish Clytemnestra of Eschylus, beHæmon in the Antigone' (to take only one cause the one has the feelings of humanity instance), could never have been represent- and outrages them, the other is purely fiended by one expression, since they embrace ish. The dying curse of Edipus is more the extremes of filial submission and outrage-fearful than the howlings and ravings of the ous defiance: the father who began with Eumenides, with all the superiority of moral dignified calmness, and the son who began over physical terror. For strength of purwith affectionate obedience, are both quick-pose and unflinching endurance, Philoctetes ly hurried into anger, bitter sarcasms, and is as grand as Prometheus; while in resolumutual defiance. These fluctuations form tion, few can surpass Antigone and Electra. one of the striking characteristics of Sopho- It was not that he was unable to wield the cles; and the complexity of his plots is con- arms of terror, but because he delighted to trived for no other purpose. His plots in-portray the affections, that Sophocles earned deed are masterpieces, and fully demonstrate the name of the Attic Bee. Owing to the the delicate art which guided him. Simple in their outline they are complex in their internal structure. The events are few, the situations few; but the motives and feelings are complex. The story of the Edipus Tyrannus may be told in a few words; the play could not be analyzed in less than a dozen pages. All the minute links in the great chain are brought into view. The result is a work that fills the reader with in Respecting the differences between the simple plots of Eschylus and the complex plots of Sophocles, M. Patin has some excellent observations, and draws an ingenious parallel between the two poets and the two historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. See p. 37. † 'Lit. of Greece,' i., p. 298, trans. nature of the subjects, and of Greek feelings, little space is occupied by love in the Greek plays; but in those of Sophocles, the affections generally find beautiful expression. Perhaps nowhere but in Shakespeare is there to be found such a couplet as that in which Ismene replies to Creon's question as to her share in Antigone's disobedience. is δέδρακα τουργον, εἴπερ ἥδ' ὁμος ῥοθεῖ, καὶ ξυμμετίσχω καὶ φέρω τῆς αἰτίας.† The delicacy with which this is touched wonderful; the whole character of Ismene, with its feminine softness and mild heroism, is reflected in these lines, and how simple they are! Examine the couplet, reader, not merely in itself, but in its relation to the speaker, and the wondrous beauty of these artless words will then fill your mind with a glow of admiration. Such a couplet you will seek in vain through Eschylus. He would have made Ismene as arrogant and violent as Antigone: she would have declared her willingness to share her sister's fate in some brief, stern words, or else in hyperboles she would have been a termagant or a braggadocia. "Laisse à ma fureur le temps de croître encore. Cléone, quite unaware of the sweet delusion which Hermione cherishes, and, of course, uninfluenced by any of the sophisms in which passion is so fertile, bids Hermione fly before she is again insulted, shows her the enormity of the insult she has suffered, in having a slave preferred to her, and finishes very sagely with: Après ce qu'il a fait, que saurait-il donc faire ? Il vous aurait déplu, s'il pouvoit vous déplare." 66 To this Hermione passionately answers: m'arrête : The intensely human and extremely subtle nature of Shakspeare's creations, needs no comment here; all the world are agreed on the matter. But Racine demands a few Je crains de me connaître en l'état où je suis. Pourquoi veux-tu, cruelle, irriter mes ennuis? words from us in exposition. Our remarks De tout ce que tu vois tâche de ne rien croire will be understood to apply to Racine in re- Crois que je n'aime plus, vante-moi ma victoire; lation to all other French poets, not in rela- Crois que dans son dépit mon cœur est endurci ; tion to poets in general. We do not enter Hélas! et s'il se peut fais-le-moi croire aussi. that debateable ground of national taste and Tu veux que je le fuie? Hé bien? rien no national prejudice. We do not pretend to Allons, n'envions plus son indigne conquête; settle the rank each poet occupies on Par-Que sur lui sa captive étende son pouvoir; nassus, but the position he holds in the dra- Fuyons. . . . Mais si l'ingrat rentrait dans son ma of his own country. This method is not devoir; only the fairest, but the safest. As Coleridge said of Klopstock, that he was a very German Milton, so may Englishmen say that Racine was a very French Shakspeare ;† our task is to show that Racine did for the French drama what Sophocles and Shakspeare did for theirs. In the two great qualities of a dramatic writer, style and characterization, Racine has never, in his own country, been approached. The precept of Horace, "In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis," that exquisite propriety of diction which equally avoids triviality and bombast, is beautifully illustrated in the plays of Racine, and is felt and acknowledged by all persons competent to judge. In dramatic exposition of character he is also masterly. Let us rapidly trace his delineation of Hermione, which is, perhaps, his finest character, though Andromaque' is not his finest play. She is introduced as betrothed to Pyrrhus, whom she ardently loves, but who deserts her for Andromaque. Self-love struggling with injuries, jealously swallowing up all tenderness, makes her exclaim, Ah! je l'ai trop aimé, pour ne le point hair! Cléone counsels her to fly; "Ah!' she replies, *See also our remarks on the character of Ismene, in our last Number. † Mr. Hallam, in his Literature of Europe,' ranks Racine next to Shakspeare as a dramatic writer. Vol. iv. 462. Si la foi dans son cœur retrouvoit quelque place m'outrager. Demeurons toutefois pour troubler leur fortune.” The fluctuations of feeling need not be pointed out; we cannot, however, pass over in silence the passionate depth of "Je crains de me connaître en l'état où je suis." In this state of outraged affection, her thoughts recur to Oreste, who long has sighed in vain for her; dallying for a moment with the faint surmise,' encouraging the flattering idea of happiness with him, she says: "6 Quelque soit Pyrrhus Hermione est sensible, Oreste a des vertus ; Cléone. Madame le voiçi. Hermione. Ah! je ne croyais pas qu'il fut si près d'içi!" In these few lines there is considerable subtlety. The third paints her own character while painting his. She, too, loves without return; and on this ground of sympathy she builds the hope of future happiness. 'He loves, will make himself beloved.' But directly Cléone says that he is at hand, we see how 'like the baseless fabric of a dream,' this flattering hope; she starts, and exclaims, 'I did not think he was so |