Tragedy has been often attempted in England in the eighteenth century, but a genius of the first rank has never made his appearance. They laid aside the manner of Dryden, however, and that was certainly an improvement. Rowe was an honest admirer of Shakspeare, and his modest reverence for this superior genius was rewarded by a return to nature and truth. The traces of imitation are not to be mistaken: the part of Gloster in Jane Shore is even directly borrowed from Richard the Third. Rowe did not possess boldness and vigour, but sweetness and feeling; he could excite the softer emotions, and hence, in his Fair Penitent, Jane Shore, and Lady Jane Gray, he has successfully chosen female heroines and their weaknesses for his subject.

Addison possessed an elegant mind, but he was by no means a poet. He undertook to purify the English tragedy, by a compliance with the supposed rules of good taste. We might have expected from a judge of the ancients, that he would have endeavoured to

approach the Greek models. Whether he had any such intention I know not, but certain it is, that he

*The plot and delineation of character of The Fair Penitent, are borrowed, without acknowledgment, from The Fatal Dowry, the joint production of Massinger and Field. Schlegel, in his notice of Massinger, does not appreciate him according to his worth. This Poet, who is certainly entitled to a high rank among his contemporaries, has seldom been understood, even by native critics. Gifford was the first to render justice to his exquisite and too much neglected dramas.-J. C.

has produced nothing but a tragedy after the French cut. Cato is a feeble and frigid piece, almost destitute of action, without one truly overpowering moment. Addison has so narrowed a great and heroic picture by his timid manner of treating it, that he could not even fill up the frame without foreign intermixtures. Hence, he had recourse to the traditional love intrigues; if we count well, we shall find no fewer than six persons in love in this piece: Cato's two sons, Marcia and Lucia, Juba and Sempronius. The good Cato cannot therefore avoid, as a provident father of a family, to arrange two marriages at the conclusion. With the exception of Sempronius, the villain of the piece, the lovers are one and all somewhat silly. Cato, who ought to be the soul of the whole, is hardly ever shown to us in action; nothing remains for him to do, but to admire himself and to die. It might be thought that the stoical determination of suicide, without struggle and without passion, is not a fortunate subject; but correctly speaking, no subjects are unfortunate, every thing depends on seizing each in the correct manner. Addison has been induced, by the wretched unity of place, to leave out Cæsar, the only worthy contrast to Cato; and, in this respect, even Metastasio has managed matters better. The language is pure and simple, but without vigour; the rhymeless Iambic gives more freedom to the dialogue, and an air somewhat less conventional than it has in the French tragedies; but in vigorous eloquence, Cato remains far behind them.

Addison took his measures well; he brought all the great and small critics, with Pope at their head, the whole militia of good taste under arms, that he might excite a high expectation of the piece which he had produced with so much labour. Cato was universally praised, as a work without an equal. And on what foundation do these boundless claims rest? On regularity of form? This had been already observed by the French poets for nearly a century, and notwithstanding the constraint, they had often attained a much stronger pathetic effect. Or on the political sentiments? But in a single dialogue between Brutus and Cassius, in Shakspeare, there is more of a Roman way of thinking, and republican energy, than in all Cato.

I doubt whether this piece could ever have produced a powerful impression, but its reputation has certainly had a prejudicial influence on tragedy in England. The example of Cato, and the translations of French tragedies, which became every day more and more frequent, could not, it is true, render universal the belief in the infallibility of the rules; but they were held in sufficient consideration to disturb the conscience of the dramatic poets, and they therefore availed themselves of the prerogatives inherited by them from Shakspeare, with an extreme degree of timidity. On the other hand, these prerogatives were at the same time problems; it requires an extraordinary degree of skill to manage such great masses as Shakspeare used to bring together, with simplicity and perspicuity: more

drawing and perspective are required for an extensive fresco painting, than for a small oil picture. In renouncing the intermixture of comic scenes when they no longer understood their ironical aim, they did perfectly right: Southern still attempted them in his Oroonoko, but they exhibit a wretched appearance in his hands. With the general knowledge and admiration of the ancients in England, we might have expected some attempt at a true imitation of the Greek tragedy; no such imitation has however made its appearance; in the choice and handling of their materials, they show an undoubted affinity to the French. Some poets of celebrity in other departments of poetry, Young, Thomson, Glover, have written tragedies, but no one of them has displayed any true tragical talent.

They have now and then had recourse to familiar tragedy to assist the barrenness of imagination; but the moral aim, which must exclusively prevail in this species, is a true extinguisher of genuine poetical inspiration. They have therefore been satisfied with a few attempts. The Merchant of London,* and The Gamester, are the only plays in this way which have attained any considerable reputation. The Merchant of London is remarkable for having been praised by Diderot and Lessing, as a model deserving of imitation. This error could only have escaped from Lessing, in the keenness of his hostility to the French conventional tone. For in reality, we must perpetually bear in mind the honest views of Lillo, to prevent us from * More generally known as George Barnwell.—J. C.

finding The Merchant of London as laughable as it is certainly trivial. Whoever possesses so little knowledge of the world and of men ought not to set up for a public lecturer on morals. We might draw a very different conclusion from this piece, from that which the author had in view, namely, that we ought to make young people early acquainted with prostitutes, to prevent them from entertaining a violent passion, and being at last led to steal and murder, for the first wretch who spreads her snares for them, (which they cannot possibly avoid). Besides, I cannot approve of making the gallows first visible in the last scene; such a piece ought always to be acted with a place of execution in the back ground. With respect to the edification to be drawn from a drama of this kind, I should prefer the histories of malefactors, which are usually printed in England at executions; they contain, at least, real facts, instead of awkward fictions.

Garrick's appearance forms an epoch in the history of the English theatre, as he chiefly dedicated his talents to the great characters of Shakspeare, and built his own fame on the growing admiration for this poet. Before his time, Shakspeare had only been brought on the stage in mutilated and disfigured alterations. Garrick returned on the whole to the true originals, though he still allowed himself to make some very unfortunate changes. It appears to me, that the only alteration of Shakspeare which is excusable is, the leaving out a few things in conformity to the taste of the time. Garrick was undoubtedly a great actor. Whether he