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ingly. Besides, the royalists entertained deep-rooted prejudices against everything English, attributing, as they did and still do, to English example the introduction of systems which they hold to be fatal to the peace of their country. Admiration of the British Constitution they do believe to have been the primary cause of the first revolution, and the immediate cause of that of July. As in politics, so in philosophy. Locke they regard as the source of the materialism of the 18th century. Even Cousin, at the present day, upholds this strange doctrine; which, if true to any extent, would only be true to this-that minds of particular cast only appropriate partially and as much of foreign speculation as agrees with their own habits of thought. The French only see one side of Locke, while, having charged political misfortune and philosophical error on England, and renouncing her religious reformation altogether, they were in no favorable mood for allow ing Shakespeare to rush in and dethrone Corneille and Racine. Prejudices of another kind procured this party allies amongst the public at large. Priests of a new literary faith, our young Romanticists, moved by unreflecting enthusiam, placed Shakespeare in the foreground of the battle, and that not for his own sake alone. They did not, with exclusive devotion to one revered object, profess the simple idea of making their countrymen acquainted with a great foreign poet. Only Germans appear capable of this sort of self-abnegation and power of repelling mixed motives. They had their own romantic dramas ready to be excused and vindicated by the English example. This only excited the stronger repulsion against an author held responsible for the new heresies. In fine, the awful figure of the great Bard of Avon was thrust into the midst of strife, and we must not wonder if, under such circumstances, few bent the knee.

Since that period there has been only one attempt to represent a play of Shakespeare, with some approach to fidelity to the original. It was towards the close of the year 1847 that the celebrated Alexandre Dumas caused Hamlet, as translated by him

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self and Paul Meurice, into rhymed verse, to be represented at the Theatre Historique. Alexandre Dumas had become the proprietor of this new theatre, with the avowed intention of introducing the master pieces of the English, Spanish, Ita lian, and German schools; and the audience, as if to be reminded each evening of a design so worthy of a man of letters, entered a porch which looked like a temple, dedicated to poets of other lands; for round a cir cular ceiling, on an azure ground, stood the figures of Shakespeare, Calderon, Alfieri, and Schiller. Othello had preceded by a few months the revolution of July, so Hamlet appeared almost on the eve of 1848, and amidst the ruin caused by the republic was that of the Theatre Historique. As far as it went the experiment proved, we believe, not unsatisfactory. The public showed themselves, at all events, better prepared for the reception of Shakespeare. The language had of late been more studied, and English literature better appreciated. The recollection of Mr. Macready's performance at the Theatre des Italiens, a couple of years before, was still vivid. That fine actor had been pro nounced by Parisian critics more truly classic than any one of whom the French stage could boast. Classic, as applied to acting, meant, in the French vocabulary, the attainment of the pure ideal, and this ideal was exhibited in the performances of Hamlet and Macbeth. This, in itself, was a blow to the cant about Shakespeare being the opposite of classic. Ón Dumas himself, as upon all the leading literary characters of the day, the acting of Mr. Macready made a profound impression; and when the popular dramatist himself had become manager, and by the time he offered his own version of Hamlet, prejudices were not entirely effaced, yet had hostility completely ceased. We regret to have to make a heavy accusation even against M. Dumas, and his co-partner, M. Paul Meurice. Their version of Hamlet was fair enough, until they came to the catastrophe. True, they omitted some scenes, as, for example, the opening one of the play itself, so indispensa bly necessary for the preparation;

and they made some slight transpositions; but all this was pardonable when compared with the monstrousness of their inverted catastrophe. As the king dies, the ghost appears, and proceeds to pronounce the decree of heaven on the king, the queen, Laertes and Hamlet. For the king no pardon! In the case of the queen there are des circonstances attenuantes. Laertes is already sufficiently punished, and may die comfortably. Hamlet is condemned-to live! This is a fall from literary labor to the most clumsy theatrical contrivance; and in this scenic effort Dumas and Co., in parting with Shakespeare, abandoned the Horatian rule ::

If in a portrait you should see a handsome woman with a fish's tail, would you not laugh, and call the painter mad?

In order to screw on this incongruous tail, Horatio is thrown aside. Now it is the sterling friendship of Hamlet and Horatio which is our own binding link of sympathy with Hamlet. We are not quite satisfied with his conduct towards Ophelia, nor indeed towards any one else; and it is a wonderful proof of Shakespeare's genius, that, despite his vacillations and splenetic bursts of weak temper, we are made not only to sympathise so keenly with his sufferings, but to respect him so profoundly. It is because he moves on the verge of the awful bourne, invested with his dead father's presence, and because though all that is human of him staggers and grows faint, yet his mind's eye ranges reverentially through the supernatural-it is on this account that we tremble like himself, and shrink as he does from the execution of his promise to the Ghost. Between him and all other human beings that appearance of the royal Dane has created separation, except with his friend Horatio. By the perfect virtue of his friendship is the latent strength of Hamlet's soul made manifest, and the noble heart fo: whom Horatio would at the last moment have shown himself

"More an antique Roman than a Dane," is one to whom, with his devoted friend, we say

"Good night, sweet Prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

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Dumas and Co.'s derangement

we thank thee, Sand, for teaching us that word," proves that however generally impressed with the grandeur of Hamlet, they had no subtle insight into the character of the Prince of Denmark.

We have now seen how Shakespeare has been treated by French adapters, arrangers, and derangers. Ducis was the first to take liberties with the object of Voltaire's sneering condemnation. Voltaire in his latter days rather retracted the hasty conclusions of his earlier and cruder studies, and Ducis thought he reconciled all differences by arranging Hamlet according to the classic models of the period. He accordingly treated Shakespeare as at this day we see trees and shrubs "arranged" in the royal gardens of Versailles: that is to say, cut into formal shapes, as if nature herself, in presence of royalty, should appear in an artificial dress. The Bard of Avon was presented at court with wig, waistcoat, ruffles, buckles, and sword; yet it is said that Talma could discern the great spirit through the tawdry disguise, and rose to sublimity in "To be or not to be." M. De Vigny had the honour of being the first to exhibit Shakespeare in integrity and truth. Why circumstances were against him and his gallant companions, Barbier de Wailly and Deschamps, we have already explained; and why we believe the day of victory not to be far off, we have rather suggested than dared to affirm. Sure do we feel, however, that it would be better to leave Shakespeare alone than dress him up in false colours, and in a sort of Harlequin patch-work. With all our heart do we protest against such profane incongruisms, whether attempted by a Dumas or a Sand.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

OUR narrative of the life of James Montgomery was, in our first volume for 1855, brought down to the publication of the "World before the Flood," the most popular of his poems. Montgomery was now in the forty-first year of his age, and in the full maturity of his powers. Of power, in any sense of the word, Montgomery exhibited little in his earliest verses. His "Prison Amusements" was one of the dullest poems we ever read; but in every successive work he threw aside commonplaces, and at last worked out a pure and clear style. The conventional language in which verse was then written, was adopted in all he at first wrote. What was peculiar in Montgomery was, that with this conventional language was united the dialect of the "religious world." Each of these faults was a passport to the admiration of the half-educated; for each addressed itself to prepared sympathies, which obeyed the magic of familiar words and forms, and Montgomery seemed for a while the slave and victim of Spirits whom he was soon able to command. It is probable that even yet he is by many persons admired for the poems in which his language is cast in the old moulds of the conventicle, and of the De la Crusca school. A few stanzas occur, in almost every one of his lyrical poems, happily conceived, and written with great beauty of expression; but he soon descends from these heights, and we are reminded of the audience whose admiration he is seeking, and from whose sight he fears he has risen too high. The kindliness to him of Southey and Aikin, who, through their reviews, made his name known to a better, if not a larger class of readers than he was able to command before, had the effect,-of which the poet himself was perhaps unconscious -of compelling him in his later writings to think in sympathy with a

higher order of minds than those which he first sought to interest. It is scarcely too much to say that the change elevated him in the scale of being. Among the most interestingthings which his biographers have preserved, are a few letters of Southey's. Southey saw in poems, which with less genial critics had excited only ridicule, the manifesta: tions of true genius; and,-always generous-had done what in him lay to bring the works into public notice.

In the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost, Adam is shewn the fate of his posterity. Some sixty lines are employed in describing the state of the ante-diluvian world

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Dublin University Magazine, vol. 45, p. 318.

imagination is inspired by both. We are told that, wishing to print some shorter poems in companionship with one of greater length, as in the case of his "Wanderer of Switzerland" and "West Indies," he was looking out for a subject for the longer poem to which his fugitive poems of the last year or two might be annexed, and found it impossible to disengage his mind from the scriptural narrative of Enoch's translation, which he connected with Milton's paraphrase; and that on one Sunday morning, while he was going to his place of worship, this vision of the World before the Flood "rose like an exhalation"-that the poem was rapidly written and sent to a friend for the purpose of being forwarded to the Longmans for immediate publication. The poem as at first conceived and executed was but one-third of its present length. His friend, instead of sending it to the publisher, returned it to the poet, suggesting alteration and extension on a large scale. This led to the manuscript passing through several hands, and to a great deal of inconsistent criticism. The poet bore it with great good humour, and sought as far as he could to please every body. The old scruples against religious poetry, as adding or taking away from the Scripture, were suggested by his own disturbed mind, when he was agitated by discussions from without and misgivings from within, on all the possibilities and impossibilities of his theme. The

friend who had advised him to en

large the poem beyond its original plan Parken, the editor of the Eclectic Review wrote reasonably to him :

"In your poem," says Mr. Parken, "there is no intention to deceive: there is no probability that any person will be deceived; and if the whole world were to be deceived, not a single feeling would be excited or a single action performed which would not be sanctioned by enlarged views of our nature, or which would be in the smallest degree detrimental to the happiness of a If I wanted proofs, I single individual, would only cite the apologues and parables of Scripture, some of which, if not all, are unquestionably fictitious. The use of fiction in literature appears to me exactly analogous to the conception of quantities in mathe matics, or, to come home to my own peculiar and favourite studies, to the statement of

imaginary cases for the determination of points in law. Many cases may be imagined which probably never did occur in real life, but which might have occurred, may occur, and some time or other probably will. All the truth involved in the real case is equally involved in the imaginary one; and surely there is nothing very immoral or pernicious in getting instruction before an event actually takes place, which would be sound and salu. tary afterwards. If there is any objection to the use of fiction in connection with facts of sacred history in a poetical work, it must rest upon the extraordinary power of fascination and illusion which the highest order of poetry possesses. The popular creed with respect to the fall of man, the war of the angels, and the character of Satan, is pro bably derived at least as much from Paradise Lost' as from the book of Genesis or of Re. velation. Happily there is but little variance between them; and as to what there is, a moment's reflection detects the illusion, and the Bible is always at hand to dispel it. May your poem do as much harm as Milton's in this way, and as much good by graving re ligious facts and principles on the public

mind!"

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and

Parken read parts of the poem in manuscript to a large party, one of whom, writing to Montgomery, mentioned that Southey who had heard something of the intended poem, res gretted that it was written "in the heroic couplet-the least adapted, as he maintains, for a long poem, especially such a poem. Blank verse he recommended, and I am disposed to coincide with him." Pleasant letters those for the poor printer whose poem was already written. Were he not a pious man he would have pitched to the very devil all these devilkins, who were worse than the most fantastic of those who tormented Saint Anthony. Had the devils of his own office rebelled against him, and the types become mutinous and formed themselves into words suggestive of murder and revolution, when he bade them speak of nothing but love-as Anacreon's lyre would speak only of love when the poet called for heroic song-our poor friend could not have been more surprised. Blank verse, indeed!why, of all things in the world, rhyme was what he liked best; in fact, in his earlier poems it was all in all-and he had often gone far for a rhyme when it would not come? Was it not he who wrote the unfor gotten lines

Should some rough unfeeling Dobbin,*

In this iron-hearted age,

Seize thee on thy nest, poor Robin,

And confine thee in a cage?

Seriously, the complaint that the poem was not written in blank verse, coming from one of the committee appointed to examine it, could not but have stirred the blood of the most lethargic Moravian that ever indulged in the comfortable torpor of a Greenland winter. Montgomery thought it best to appeal to Southey himself. He sent him a considerable portion of the poem in manuscript, and from him he received the comforting assurance that he "never should have objected to the heroic couplet, if it had often been written as you write it with that full and yet unwearying harmony, well varied, but never interrupted." Southey's letter is too long for extract, but to any persons wishing to estimate Southey, and to learn the facts of his early life, as told by himself, with reference to their effect upon him as a poet and a man, this letter is well worth attentive perusal.

Montgomery visited London in the spring of this year, and remained for what are called "the May meetings." It would be unjust to Montgomery not to transcribe the following passage from a speech of his, delivered three years afterwards, at a Sunday school society :

At this enchanting season, when an invisible hand is awakening the woods, and shaking the trees into foliage,-when an invisible foot is walking the plains and the valleys, where flowers and fragrance follow its steps,-when a voice, unheard by man, is teaching every little bird to sing, in every bush, the praises of God,-when a beneficent power, perceived only in its effects, is diffusing life, and light, and liberty, and joy throughout the whole creation,-at this enchanting season, who would not love the country? Who would choose the filth, and confinement, and tumult of the town? I love the country; I love the month of May; yet the month of May, when the country is most beautiful (had I freedom of choice), I would spend in London? And why? Because in that mouth the assemblies of the people of God are most frequent and most full. Then, too, the tribes from the provinces go up to worship there at the anniver

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Montgomery: "I heard Campbell deliver one of his Lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution, before one of the most brilliant audiences I ever saw assembled on such an occasion.' Holland: "Was Lord Byron present?" Montgomery: "He did not make his appearance that evening, and I was disappointed in the expectation I had entertained of seeing him. You could not look upon the company without recognising some individual eminent in rank or distinguished in litera ture but the moment the lecturer begun, I had no longer a disposition to regard the celebrities about me. He read from a paper be fore him; but in such an energetic manner, and with such visible effect, as I should hardly have supposed possible. His states ments were clear, his style elegant, and his reasoning conclusive. After having wound up the attention of his hearers to the highest pitch, brought his arguments to a magnificent climax, and closed with a quotation from Shakspeare, in his best manner, off he went like a rocket! This lecture was the more striking, from its contrast with that delivered by Coleridge the evening before, from the same rostrum. In the former case, the lecturer, though impressing us at once, and in a high degree, with the power of genius, occasionally accompanied the most sublime but inconclusive trains of reasoning with the most intense-not to say painful-physiog nomical expression I ever beheld; his brows being knit, and his cheeks puckered into deep triangular wrinkles, by the violence of his own emotions. But, notwithstanding the frequent obscurity of his sentiments and this painful' accompaniment, when the lecture closed you could not say you had been disappointed." Everett:" What were the subjects of the lectures ?" Montgomery Campbell's was on the French and English rhyming tragedies, and Coleridge's on Greek tragedy." Holland : “ I think Campbell has the best managed powers of any living poet, and exceeds Coleridge as much in taste as he is inferior to him in the deep pathos of pure genius." Montgomery: "I believe that is about the fact: whatever Campbell under

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'Dobbin, a word chosen to express à fude inhuman fellow.".

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