'The provident Rose, in a nook of the glade,
Had a dozen long tables for banqueting laid,
And ordered, at intervals during the rout,

The refreshments prepared to be handed about.

Old CORN-FLOWER had sent her some cakes of his baking,
The CANDYTUFT, sweetmeats, and jams of her making;
The BUTTER-CUP, milk-maid, brought junket and whey;
The PEWTERWORT, dishes and plates in his tray.
HERB-CHRISTOPHER offered his service to wait;
HERB-ROBERT appeared in his livery of state;

And SWEET-WILLIAM, so handsome, and gay, and polite,
In a rich suit of crimson, embroidered with white,
Showed all that attention which fitly display'd is
By gallant young men to the wants of the ladies.
The ROSE decked the tables with pleasing devices;
The SNOW-DROP* supplied a profusion of ices;

But the plants of the Green-house refused 'em through fear,
As unwholesome to eat at that time of the year.

So the PITCHER-PLANT furnished a plentiful draught

Fresh drawn from the clouds, which was eagerly quaff'd;
And while AMARYLLIS, the handmaid of Flora,
With dimple of Hebe, and blush of Aurora,

In CAMPANULA goblets of silver and blue,

Handed round, from his vessel, the glistening dew,
Sweet CowSLIP the lass and ROSE BURGUNDY join,
And, kissing each cup, turn the water to wine.
'As evening was closing, to wind up the whole,
The light little COLUMBINE danced a pas seul;
Then ROCKETS went off in a brilliant display,

And the Birds with a chorus concluded the day.'

Fastidious must be that critic who with-holds the smile of approbation from verses so easy, sprightly, and graceful.-They are accompanied by Lines sent with a Violet, on Valentine's Day, and by the Rosc-bud, which would not disgrace any reputable collection of fugitive pieces.-The explanatory notes are neither pedantic nor fatiguing; and they are calculated to convey some interesting information to those who are strangers to the habits of the vegetable tribes.

The snow-drop on the 30th of June is rather a violent anachronism, evea for a poet.-Why overlook the services of the iceplant?

A course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, by Augustus William Schlegel: translated from the original German by John Black. 8vo. 2 Vols. 1. 4s. Boards. Baldwin and Co. 1815.

AURSE of lecutures on the dramatic art having been announced by M. Schlegel at Vienna, in the spring of 1808, the emperor of Germany transmitted to him in his own hand-writing the permission which had been solicited for the delivery of them; and a brilliant audience of nearly three hundred persons, including courtiers, artists, ladies distinguished for accomplishment, men of letters, and celebrated actors assembled with eager curiosity. Madame de Stael, who was one of the hearers, has recorded the strong impression which was made on all by the lecturer's judicious selection of instruction and the splendid interventions of his eloquence; and the public admiration excited by the delivery has not been in any degree disappointed, now that the discourses are collected and revised, and exposed by distant publication to the severer ordeal of literary examiners. Yet, in all lectures, something must be sacrificed to immediate and obvious effect; and, whatever be the topic, the public speaker must exaggerate in good or bad, in order that his audience may feel electrified. The oral critic, therefore, cannot afford a justice so impartial as the writer.

We shall run over the lectures, one by one: but, trusting to public perusal for a general dissemination of their contents, we shall not attempt a minute analysis, or a complete epitome; rather endeavouring to dwell on the questionable sentences of award, or portions of theory. Disposed to rationality more than to mysticism, we are apt to doubt when we do not understand; and some platonic flights of style, or system, in M. Schlegel, not being easily reduced to perspicuous definition, these we mistrust. We are not fond, moreover, of a priori criticism, which makes the guage first, and then tries the work by it. We think that it is possible to admire Shakspeare without deifying Calderon, although M. Schlegel's plan of panegyric applies equally to both; and our feelings allot a higher value to Euripides, to Diderot, and to Kotzebue, than these writers can be permitted to claim under a scheme of appreciation, which assigns to domestic tragedy and sentimental drama the lowest rank in art. "Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux," said Voltaire, liberally and justly; and, of course, we should praise or blame by the head, and not by the class. Greater power may be displayed by one artist in a secondary line of art, than by another in the first

The introductory lecture treats of the spirit of true criticism, and here a good passage occurs:

Before I proceed farther, I wish to say a few words respecting the spirit of my criticism, a study to which I have devoted a great part of my life. We see numbers of men, and even whole nations, so much fettered by the habits of their education, and modes of living, that they cannot

shake themselves free from them, even in the enjoyment of the fine arts. Nothing to them appears natural, proper, or beautiful, which is foreign to their language, their manners, or their social relations. In this exclusive mode of seeing and feeling, it is no doubt possible, by means of cultivation to attain a great nicety of discrimination in the narrow circl within which they are limited and circunscribed. But no man can be a true critic or connoisseur who does not possess an universality of mind, who does not possess the flexibility, which, throwing aside all personal predilections and blind habits, enables him to transport himself into the peculiarities of other ages and nations, to feel them as it were from their proper central point, and, what ennobles human nature, to recognise and respect whatever is beautiful and grand under those external modifications which are necessary to their existence, and which sometimes even seem to disguise them.'

M. Schlegel then proceeds to point out the characteristic difference of taste between the ancients and the moderns; which is traced principally to the diversity of religous persuasion that prevailed in the old and in the new world. The same idea was maintained by us in M. Rev. Vol. xviii. N. S. p. 129. The lecturer would apply the epithet classical to those forms, or moulds, in which ancient works of art are shaped; and the term romantic to those forms, or moulds, in which modern works of art are shaped. In reviewing the late Mr. Pye's Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics, we opposed the Gothic drama to the Greek drama in a similar spirit of classification. If M. Schlegel be correct in supposing that the Gothic nations borrowed from Spain those early specimens of dramatic art which became their favourite domestic modles the denomination romantic drama may be the

more exact.

The ancients, and their imitators the Italians and French, are described as constituting the classical school of art, while the Spaniards, the English, and the Germans, belong to the romantic. The latter school appears to be the more natural of the two, and to include less of the local and conventional in its manner: since the "Sakontala," a Hindoo drama, composed in complete disconnection with either the ancient or the modern literature of Europe, approaches much nearer in structure to a play of Shakspeare than to a play of Sophocles; and so does "The Orphan of China," in its native form. If we remember rightly, it was Herder who, by his rhapsody on Shakspeare, first gave to the German critics the luminous idea, that the Gothic or romantic drama should be considered as a peculiar form of art, having laws and conditions of its own; and that it is not less beautiful, and is far more convenient and comprehensive, than the Greek plan of drama, which could not have included in one whole the representation of any great event, such as the usurpation of Macbeth, the conspiracy of Venice, or the revolution of Swisserland under William Tell. With a chorus of furies, Eschylus could leap over the bounds of space and time in his Orestes, and yet

observe sufficient probability: but, in general, the supposed presence of an unchanged chorus, during the entire action, confined nearly to one spot and to one day the incidents that were introduced into a Greek tragedy. Hence a scene of family-distress is commonly the utmost attainment of the classical poet; and a cluster of independent plays, a trilogy, was requisite to exhibit on the Athenian stage the events of a single Gothic drama.

The phenomena of nature,' says M. Schlegel in his second lecture, flow into one another, and do not possess an independent existence; a work of art, on the contrary, must be a connected whole, and complete within itself. Certainly, great skill is requisite, in the dramatic poet, neatly to detach an historic incident from its causes and effects, so as to give it a beginning, a middle, and an end; and to round it gracefully into a plot separate and entire, and progressively interesting. The historical plays of Shakspeare do not always attain this perfection: sometimes the action wants unity, as in Henry IV., from the admixture of extraneous characters and incidents; sometimes it wants wholeness, as in the second part of Henry IV., there being no proper catastrophe, or termination of the story; and sometimes it wants progressive interest, as in Henry VIII., and is prolonged beyond the period which decided the fate of the principal personages. Too close an imitation of nature, or adherence to fact, has occasioned these faults.

We have also an explanation of the division of dramatic art into tragic and comic pieces, and the greater severity of the ancients is asserted in keeping each kind unmixed. It may be suspected, however, that we possess castrated Alexandrian editions of the ancient dramatists. Aristarchus is known to have struck out many idle passages from Homer; the managers of an Alexandrian theatre may have rejected many from Eschylus; and we perhaps inherit only what the pruning knife of the critic has spared. In the Prometheus, the entrance of the crazy old maid Io must have been intended for comic effect: clad in a cow-hide, with horns, and in avowed search of a sublime husband, she must, with her mops and moes, have excited derision; and the chorus satirically tell her, that it would have been better to marry an artisan than to speculate on climbing the bed of a divinity. In the Persians, the ironic character of the whole dialogue is a thoroughly comic emotion; and the return of Xerxes, a fugitive, with nothing left but a quiver of unshot arrows, his unmanly grief, and the chorus of old noblemen, parodying the manner in which women were wont to beat their breasts and howl at funerals, must have convulsed an Athenian audience with loud laughter. Potter, in his translation of Eschylus, has missed the true tone of this piece: his dialogue imitates the sedate style of Thomson's Agamemnon, instead of the false tragic of Tom Thumb; and his choral odes affect the elegant diction of Gray, instead of the overcharged manner of the Probationary Odes, which were before him. The Persians

of Eschylus are throughout written in the mock-heroic spirit of Chrononhotonthologos. We are mortified to see critic after critic, and even M. Schlegel himself, mistaking comedy for tragedy. He professes to treat with contempt the translation of Father Brumoy, but he slips into the same blunder.

Lecture iii. is an excellent composition, describing the structure of the Greek stage with luminous clearness and learned research. This account would exceed our limits as a quotation: but it deserves the attentive consultation of every classical scholar. Barthélémy is censured for comparing the ancient tragedy with the modern opera: since the delivery of the Greek actors resembled chant rather than recitative, and had principally for its object to render audible to vast crouds the words of the poet; while the chorus sang in unison, accompanied with simple instruments, rather intended to indicate and regulate the rhythm than to overpower the voices. The use of masks is ingeniously but not sa tisfactorily defended by M. Schlegel; it occasions a loss of pathetic expression and change of feeling, for which no physiognomical adaptation can be an indemnity: but for impassive beings, such as ghosts, gods, and the witches in Macbeth, masks might still perhaps be used with good effect.

M. Schlegel observes that the conception of the Greek tragedy was ideal; and that it aimed at heroic delineation, at a colossal majesty, and a grace beyond nature. This is true of Eschylus,less true of Sophocles, and not at all of Euripides;—it is true of French tragedy generally, of Young among the English, and of Schiller among the Germans. What is the proper inference? Merely that the heroic is a praiseworthy branch of art; and that to excel in it has in all civilized ages and countries founded permanent reputation. M. Schlegel, however, seems inclined to place the essence of art in this elevation more than human; on which principle Euripides, Shakspeare, and Goethe, the poets who are truest to nature and most various in their delineations, must be pushed back into the infeior ranks. Grandeur of manner, in the arts of design as in the dramatic art, is accomplished by the omission of detail, but truth of nature by the insertion of it: hence some incompatibility must always subsist between the ideal and the true; between the beautiful and the characteristic; between the heroic and the natural. Why not award equal degrees of praise to equal degrees of excellence in either department?

Something is said concerning the object and purpose of tragedy; and it is remarked that commentators are not agreed about the meaning of Aristotle, who maintains that by the operation of dramatic fear and pity the passions are to be epurated.—Let us attempt the same thought in modern phraseology, and surely its justice will be admitted. Every stage-hero pleads eloquently the cause of the passion which agitates him; and hence a higher degree of fellow-feeling is aroused among the spectators, than similar