master of intense description; nor is the concluding image, in the following passage, less remarkable for its imaginative realization of a natural picture : "How long since dramas in some points. It keeps close and clear view of a single and simple action, and represents it strictly upon the explicit and rhythmical and not the symbolic and harmonic method, and conse Is it, that standing in this compassed window,quently it is easy and pleasant reading; The blackbird sang us forth, from yonder bough That hides the arbor, loud and full at first Philip van Artevelde and Mr. Taylor's other dramas, display qualities which make us ashamed to lay much stress upon the writer's skill in word-painting. It would, however, demand more than the entire space occupied by this article to do justice to the virile force, the simplicity, and the fullness of construction, which are the great merits of these dramas. None but a statesman could have represented statesmen as Mr. Taylor has represented Van Artevelde, Van den Bosch, the Earl of Flanders, Dunstan, and Isaac Comnenus. A certain sameness in the main characters is the necessary defect of the epic tendencies of Mr. Taylor's dramas. He is quite right, for reasons already given, in avoiding the representation of strong individualities in his heroes, for all strong individualities imply great defects and disproportions in character. The wise and good statesman, whether he occupies the time and place of Isaac Comnenus, or of Philip van Artevelde, will be one and the same character in the main; and the epic pitch of the two dramas which go by the names of those heroes involves too great a similarity of circumstance to allow of any, very diverse development of characters, on the whole, so much alike. No poet should write more than one drama of this kind, if he would avoid the appearance of want of fertility. Violenzia: a Tragedy, has not made a considerable reputation, only because its subject is one which excludes it from the reading of young people. The subject, however, has not been chosen in ignorance or wanton outrage of the world's opinion, like that of the Cenci; but because a less terrible wrong than that done to Violenzia, and, through her, to her betrothed, could not have elevated the conduct of the latter to the highest pitch of the heroic. Violenzia resembles Mr. Taylor's in free and musical flow of verse it is superior to every other drama of the present day. The story is that of an Earl of Felborg, (Ethel,) who, on taking commission in the army of the king, brings his betrothed, Violenzia, for safety, to the court. During the farewell festivities, the attentions of the king, a notorious voluptuary, to Violenzia, together with her manifest pleasure in them, alarm her brothers, Robert and Arthur, who also hold high commissions in the departing army, and somewhat grieve Ethel, who, however, knows Violenzia too well to augur serious evil from this display of feminine vanity in a woman who loves him deeply, and is too innocent to know how her behavior may be interpreted by suspicious people, like her brothers, and by the king himself: "Robert. What! do you mark it too? for in your eye I read but small contentment. Yet youth may plead her pardon; nor do I think She spoke him much encouragement. Delight to have a royal pursuivant ; It is a great fault in the construction of this play, that no sufficient reason is shown for Violenzia being left (and for safety!) at the court of such a king. Directly Ethel and the brothers are gone, Violenzia's chamber is entered by Malgodin-a mere fiend of malice-a character which we believe to be totally contrary to nature, and therefore to poetry. The king, moreover, must have learned too much about women to suppose that they could be hopefully wooed by proxy, and by such a proxy. In this character, and in other parts of the play, the author shows that he has been injuriously influenced by the extravagances of Shelley and of the old dramatists. The Cenci is, in our opinion, a very imperfect as well as a very revolting play; and the writer of After what we have said in praise of this play, the author can afford to be told that it has very serious faults. We take it that these words, from the preface, involve a radically defective appreciation of the functions of the poet: "There could be no other injury so intolerable, no other grief so great, as that which here forms the trial of the hero. For his action under that trial I am responsible as a poet only, not as a moralist. .. A poet can not make his creations subservient to the en Violenzia would have had a good chance | feeling that we could have done the same of producing a much better drama than ourselves. Uncompromisingly Christian any that Shelley could have written, had action, under such circumstances as those he depended more upon his own fine and of Ethel, is a pitch of the heroic which no poetical mind for guidance. But to fol- other dramatic writer, that we remember, low the plot: Malgodin, finding Violenzia has dared to depict; and in the choice, unpliable, circulates reports against her and in the power which has justified the reputation, thinking that she will yield to choice, of such a subject lies the chief his master's wishes the sooner for the de- merit and originality of the play. This struction of her fame. Finding them- merit has the advantage of being a most selves disappointed in this hope, Mal- seasonable one; for the old forms of the godin advises, and the king adopts, the heroic have died out, and it is high time resource of Tarquin. The rumor that she that the Christian heroic should come has yielded to the solicitations of the king upon the vacant stage. reaches the camp, and is treated with contempt by Ethel, into whose presence Violenzia, almost immediately after the rumor has reached him, rushes and tells him what has happened. Ethel being second in command of the army, is urged by his indignant friends to seize the opportunity of vengeance, by turning its power against the king, the brothers of Violenzia, one of whom is commanderin-chief, being foremost in devising his destruction. Ethel treats such a proposition as treason; and, when the brothers enforcement of his own opinions, at least a deavor to turn the forces from the enemy against their own country, they are seized, imprisoned, and condemned to death by Ethel, who assumes the chief command, gains a decisive battle over the Swedes, and then, regarding himself as called by Heaven to be a minister of justice, not revenge, turns his army homeward. In the mean time, the brothers of Violenzia have escaped from prison, and put Violenzia to death, in fulfillment of their vow. The deposition of the wicked king is an easy matter; and the play ends by Ethel's granting his request that he may not die, but pass his days in banishment and repentance, the crown being transferred to Haveloc, the younger brother of the king. It is easy to build epics and dramas upon heroic events, but it is very difficult to treat them so that they become intelligible and credible, and therefore influential for good upon the mind of the reader. It is no small praise to say that the author of Violenzia has so represented a man heroically putting aside the thought of vengeance, when there was the strongest motive and the most tempting opportunity-nay, when not to revenge himself exposed him to the scorn and misconstruction of his best friends, that we rise from the perusal of the play dramatic poet can not." Now, the great fault of the play results from this mistake of the author, in supposing that a dramatic poet is not bound to be clear upon the point of morality. We are left entirely in doubt, the poet himself is evidently entirely in doubt, as to the right of Ethel to assume regal and judicial functions for the purpose of chastising the sins of the king. The poet, we think, was bound not to leave his readers in darkness upon so important a question; Shakspeare never shirks morality in this way; probably because he never made our author's mistake, of supposing that moral ideas are merely our own opinions." Every one of the plays of Shakspeare, every poem of every really great poet, has been made "subservient to the enforcement," not of "his own opinions," but of his own certainties in morality. A good poem or drama is never what is called "didactic," not because it does not enforce definite moral views, but because its modes of enforcing them are peculiar, that is to say, indirect, symbolical, and representative rather than obvious and perceptive. 66 Intimately connected with this want of moral certainty in the mind of the author, is the evidently unintentional want of masculine force in his hero. We have said Than she be turned to folly." We must not close this notice without calling attention to a very fine point in the moral structure of this drama. So terrible a fate as that of Violenzia, is shown to have been not unprovoked by herself. It is represented as the penalty that this drama is so written that the ac- | And of her musical speech heard no more tones tion is credible to our sympathies, which Than go to make a greeting; I'll believe Rather the diamond should fade and rot, is the great point in a poem; but we doubt whether this credibility remains when it is closely examined by reason and reflection. A man in the least moral uncertainty would not have had the heart to bear him up in such a course as that pursued by Ethel; indeed, such uncertainty greatly damages the reality of his heroism, and suggests to our mind that he would have been more heroic still had he concluded to do nothing, when to do any thing was for him to take a leap in the dark. His many long, sentimental, and philosophical speeches at junctures when most men would be too full of life and action to talk much, show Ethel to have had too much of the Hamlet in him ever to have pursued a definite course with a calm and heroic determination. We have, however, to thank this temperament of soul for some passages of verse which, as poetry, are superior, or at least equal, to the best in any of the volumes before us. For example, after the death of Violenzia: That our diviner impulses, great thoughts, It is the exceeding goodness of our God, though a fearfully severe one-of her vanity, which unconsciously encouraged the wicked king's desires until they became ungovernable. That this was the author's intention, is proved by the following words in the leave-taking, where Ethel warns Violenzia of the dangers which surround her: "Ethel. Alas! thou know'st not What infinite perils set thee. Subtler genius Of Saul: a Drama, in Three Parts, published anonymously at Montreal, we have before us perhaps the only copy which has crossed the Atlantic. At all events, we have heard of no other, as it is probable we should have done, through some public or private notice, seeing that the work is indubitably one of the most remarkable English poems ever written out of Great Britain. This copy was given to the writer of the present article by Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whose recommendation of this, to him and to us, unknown Canadian poet, our readers and English literature generally are beholden for their first introduction to a most cu And press our heads to his bosom ? We are rious work. Saul is in three parts, each greater of five acts, and altogether about ten thousand lines long. In it the greatest a drama, has been treated with a poetical subject, in the whole range of history, for power and a depth of psychological knowledge which are often quite startling, though, we may say, inevitably, below the mark of the subject-matter, which is too great to be done full justice to, in any but the words in which the original history is related. What much adds to the startling effect of this poem, is the manifest fact that the writer is some person who has received little or no education, in the ordinary sense of the term. Not only does he make ridiculous mistakes in the commonest Latin quotations-for example, he has "from DE PROFUNDUS" twice ab extra, by the exaggeration of this character in the spirit himself, who is depicted with an imaginative veracity, which we do not exaggerate in saying has not been equaled in our language by any but the creator of Caliban and Ariel. Malzah is decidedly "well-disposed," like many another evil spirit, human or otherwise; he knows his faults; is almost changed, for the moment, into a good spirit by artistic influences, especially music; he has attained to be a deep philosopher through the habitual observation of himself; and does not at all like the evil work of destroying the soul of Saul-a work which he undertook voluntarily, and to which he returns as the fit takes him. The following passages will carry out what we have said, and will illustrate the oddity, subtlety, and originality of this writer's language. Malzah tries to exonerate himself, in soliloquy, from the guilt of destroying Saul: set me, over-but he is apparently ignorant of English grammar, and even of spelling. There are two things, however, which he proves that he knows; namely, the Bible and human nature; and a poet can not be said to be really uneducated who knows these well. Shakspeare he also knows far better than most men know him; for he has discerned and adopted his method as no other dramatist has done. He takes not virtue and morality, and their opposites generally, as other dramatists do, but these under the single aspect of their dependence upon spiritual influences, of whatever kind: the direct influence of the Divine Spirit; and the influence of good spirits; and of the principalities and powers of darkness; and even the mysterious influences of music, the weather, etc., upon the moral state of the soul. Like most of Shakspeare's plays, this drama has the appearance of being strangely chaotic. There are hundreds of passages for the existence of which we can not account, until the moral clue is found, and it would "I've had no part in this. I'm sorry too never be found by a careless and unre- (Like thee, king) that I ever came to thee. flecting reader; for the work is exceed Zounds! Why, I ought to have strong penance ingly artistic, and there are few things in Or else be branded with some sign of shame recent poetry so praiseworthy as the quiet For having volunteered for his undoing. and unobtrusive way in which the theme There's no essential honor nor good i'th' world, is treated. In a work written upon this But a pure selfishness is all in all. noble symbolic method, one is never sure Nay, I could curse my demonhood, and wish of exactly stating the author's meaning Myself to be thrice lost for that behavior; But I believe I am a very mean spirit." indeed, as we have said of Shakspeare, the meaning is too full to be stated more Even finer than this flippant, imbecile, and briefly than by the whole poem; but we impotent penitence of Malzah is the folare sure that we are not far from the writ-lowing song, which seems to us to be er's intention, when we say, that in Saul scarcely short of Shakspearian, notwithhe represents a man who is eminently the creature of spiritual influences; who is of standing the De Profundus! the happiest sensitive and perceptive constitution, but lacks the one thing needful, the principle of faith, which would have given the will to submit himself to the good influence and resist the bad. "Faith wanting, all his works fell short," is the only explicit statement in the whole poem of this idea; but the whole poem indirectly implies it. This view of Saul's character, which is amply justified by Scripture history, is carried out and illustrated with an elaborate subtlety of which it is impossible for us to give our readers an adequate idea. The evil spirit of the king is brought personally, under the name of Malzah, upon the stage; and we are made to understand Saul's nature, and the nature of all who are the more or less passive slaves of natural and spiritual influences "There was a devil, and his name was I; Saul enters in a gloomy passion; Malzah "Now is my time: In this poem, for the first time, spirits have been represented in a manner which fully justifies the boldness involved in representing them at all. Malzah is a living character, as true to supernature as Hamlet or Falstaff is to nature; and, by this continuation, as it were, of humanity into new circumstances and another world, we are taught to look upon humanity itself from a fresh point of view, and we seem to obtain new and startling impressions of the awful character of the influences by which we are beset. Seldom has art so well performed the office of handmaiden to religion as in this extraordinary character of Malzah, in whom we have the disembodiment of the soul of the faithless, sophistical, brave, and generously disposed King of Israel, and a most impressive poetical exposition of the awful truth, that he who is not wholly for God is against him. For proof of our opinion we can only refer the reader to the entire work, of which a few separate passages are no tests whatever. Although the language is often powerful, and the thought always so, the writer's want of literary culture is so great, that he seldom gives us many lines together without some obvious and often ludicrous fault. In proof, however, that this writer is a poet of no common order, we append a few sentences, taken almost at random from hundreds which we have marked. Saul has vowed the death of David: "Aneen. Now, my dear husband, come and take some rest. I am beneath the tyranny of a vow, Which I will honor whilst I am eclipsed, That I hereafter may have power to plead, I did it in the darkness. "Tis the fiend: le darkens, yet illuminates, my mind. Like the black heavens when lightnings ride the wind." Malzah is seen winging his way towards the palace of the king, whom he has been commissioned to possess: "Lo! when yon demon, with increasing speed, Makes his dim way across the night-hung flood, Due to the Hebrew king, with onward heed, Like to a hound that snuffs the scent of blood." Saul, like Polonius, is full of wisdom, though it goes no further than his words; for example: "Full many things are best forgot; and all The dross of life, men's vices and their failings, Should from our memories be let slip away, To strike with men a balance; to forgive, The following is one of many passages which, by creating an intelligence of the greatness and subtlety of Saul's temptations, render his example more affecting and fearful. Abner, in reply to Saul's lamentations over his liability to the apparently irresistible possessions of the evil spirit, says: "Jehovah's ways are dark. Saul. If they be just, I care not: I can endure till death relieve me; ay, And not complain; but doubt enfeebles me, And my strong heart, that gladdeth to endure, Into the speed of fever, when it thinks Falters 'neath its misgivings, and vexed, beats That the Almighty greater is than good." The power of this drama is centered in Saul and his "double," Malzah. The other characters are, on the whole, much inferior to these; and we should be leaving our readers with an exaggerated impression of the merit of the piece, were we to conclude without saying that, though the writer has shown great poetical ability, he has by no means, as yet, written a great work. His faculty, however, seems to be so peculiarly adapted for the treatment of the particular theme he has chosen, that, should these words ever meet his eye, we would venture to recommend him to reconsider, and in many parts re-write, his poem, at the same time greatly abbreviating it by the omission of those parts in which the symbolical reflection of the theme is wanting or weak. The Saint's Tragedy requires to be mentioned here for little more than the general merit of being one of the best of modern dramas. The author of Violenzia speaks of it as "a work which stands without a rival in the dramatic literature of the day;" but this is greatly to over-rate Mr. Kingsley's piece, which, though in various ways admirable, is in no respect superior to the dramas of Mr. Taylor, and in some respects inferior. Mr. Kingsley himself, we are sure, would be the first to allow the great superiority of the character of Dunstan, in Edwin the Fair, over Conrad in the Saint's Tragedy. |