passions may silence the voice of humanity; but it is, I think, equally against probability and decorum, to make both the passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most uncontrollable feelings, can only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose,-which is not the case in Ford's play; or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. The fallacy of this criticism appears to us to lie in the assumption, that the violent suppression of her feelings by the heroine was a mere piece of court etiquette-a compliment to the ceremonies of a festival. Surely the object was noble, and the effort sublime. While the deadly force of sorrow oppressed her heart, she felt that she had solemn duties to discharge, and that, if she did not arm herself against affliction till they were finished, she could never perform them. She could seek temporary strength only by refusing to pause-by hurrying on to the final scene; and dared not to give the least vent to the tide of grief, which would at once have relieved her overcharged heart, and left her, exhausted, to die. Nothing less than the appearance of gaiety could hide or suppress the deep anguish of her soul. We agree with Mr Lamb, whose opinion is referred to by our author, that there is scarcely in any other play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this!' 6 The Fifth Lecture, on Single Plays and Poems, brings into view many curious specimens of old humour, hitherto little known, and which sparkle brightly in their new setting. The Sixth, on Miscellaneous Poems and Works, is chiefly remarkable for the admirable criticism on the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, with which it closes. Here the critic separates with great skill the wheat from the chaff, showing at once the power of his author, and its perversion, and how images of touching beauty and everlasting truth are marred by the spirit of Gothic quaintness, criticism, and conceit.' The passage, which is far too long for quotation, makes us desire more earnestly than ever that an author, capable of so lucid and convincing a development of his critical doctrines, would less frequently content himself with giving the mere results of his thought, and even conveying these in the most abrupt and startling language. A remark uttered in the parenthesis of a sarcasm, or an image thrown in to heighten a piece of irony, might often furnish extended matter for the delight of those whom it now only disgusts or bewilders. The Seventh Lecture, on the works of Lord Bacon, compared as to style with those of Sir Thomas Browne and of Jeremy Taylor, is very unequal, The character of Lord Bacon is elo 6 quent, and the praise sufficiently lavish; but it does not show any proper knowledge of his works. That of Jeremy Taylor is somewhat more appropriate, but too full of gaudy images and mere pomp of words. The style of that delicious writer is ingeniously described as 'prismatic; though there is too much of shadowy chillness in the phrase, adequately to represent the warm and tender bloom which he casts on all that he touches. And when we are afterwards told that it unfolds the colours of the rainbow; floats like a bubble through the air; or is like innumerable dew drops, that glitter on the face of morning, and twinkle as they glitter;'-we can only understand that the Critic means to represent it as variegated, light and sparkling: But it appears to us that the style of Jeremy Taylor is like nothing unsubstantial or airy. The blossoms put forth in his works spring from a deep and eternal stock, and have no similitude to any thing wavering or unstable. His account of Sir Thomas Browne, however, seems to us very characteristic, both of himself and of that most extraordinary of English writers. We can make room only for a part of it. 66 As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts to the practice of life, and to bring home the light of science to the bosoms and businesses of men, "Sir Thomas Browne seemed to be of opinion, that the only business of life was to think; and that the proper object of speculation was, by darkening knowledge, to breed more speculation, and "find no end in wandering mazes lost." He chose the incomprehensible and the impracticable, as almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contemplation, or for the exercise of a solid faith. He cried out for an "oh altitudo" beyond the heights of revelation; and posed himself with apocryphal mysteries as the pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a question to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the certainty of doubt; and he removes an object to the greatest distance from him, that he may take a high and abstracted interest in it, consider it in relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and bewilder his understanding in the universality of its nature, and the inscrutableness of its origin. His is the sublime of indifference; a passion for the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his amusement, as if it was a globe of pasteboard. He looks down on sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets. The Antipodes are next door neighbours to him; and Doomsday is not far off. With a thought he embraces both the Poles; the march of his pen is over the great divisions of geography and chronology. Nothing touches him nearer than humanity. He feels that he is mortal only in the decay of Nature, and the dust of long-forgotten tombs. The finite is lost in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly bodies, or the history of empires, are to him but a point in time, or a speck in the VOL. XXXIV. Ŋo. 68. Ff 6 Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming, And harken to the thoughts thy waters teach--- And now-whither are gone the lovers now? His pale pale beauty, closer to his heart, The ship has struck. One kiss--the last-Love's own. The vessel sinks,-'tis vanished, and the sea Rolls boiling o'er the wreck triumphantly, And shrieks are heard and cries, and then short groans, Which the waves stifle quick, and doubtful tones Like the faint moanings of the wind pass by, And horrid gurgling sounds rise up and die, And noises like the choaking of man's breath-But why prolong the tale--it is of death. pp. 70-76. But they do not die.-They are succoured on the beach by fishermen and Marcian becomes a fisherman himself, and lives for some time in happy lowliness, till a second vision of the former husband drives them again to an inland retreat near his old prison of Laverna. There poor Julia learns, somehow, for the first time, that this ill-sorted mate is still alive, and that she cannot be the lawful wife of Marcian; and rejects his society, and prays to be allowed to retire to a nunnery and die;but he, inflamed with love and madness and despair, administers poison to her, and watches her placid end, and then disappears, like the Corsair, for ever. This longer poem is followed by three Dramatic Scenes-the first of which, on the death of Julian the Apostate, is the most dignified; the second, called Amelia Wentworth,' the most pathetic and poetical;-and the last, entitled The Rape of Proserpine,' a very spirited and beautiful imitation of the higher and more fanciful strains of the antient drama. Of this, as the more rare and difficult attempt, we shall give a short specimen. Proserpine is distributing her flowers very poetically to her attendant nymphs, in the florid vale of Enna, when the chariot of the grisly king comes rolling from the earth. The Semichorus then sings Mark him as he moves along Drawn by horses black and strong, A cruel beauty, such as none Proser. He comes indeed. How like a god he looks! Which even here looks brightly beautiful? What a wild leopard glance he has.-I am Jove's daughter, and shall I then deign to fly? I will not yet, methinks, I fear to stay. Come, let us go, Cyane. [PLUTO enters.] Pluto. Stay, oh! stay. Proserpina, Proserpina, I come From my Tartarean kingdom to behold you. Bowing before your beauty. Brightest maid! Roamed through the earth, where many an eye hath smiled But I have passed free from amongst them all, Or lend a voice to fountains, or to caves, Come with me, away, away, And which grey Tradition old, With all its weight of grief and crime, Daughter of great Cybele.' pp. 150–153. The Miscellaneous Poems are full of beauty and feeling; and we should be tempted, if we had room, to extract the most of them. The following lines, on a remembered Voice, are very sweet and fanciful. • Oh! what a voice is silent. It was soft Out of the grass, from which mysterious birth —Like the low voice of Syrinx, when she ran |