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Ere sensibly 'tis felt.

Be men of spirit!
Spurn coward passion! so illustrious mention
Shall blaze our names, and style us kings o'er death.

[Exeunt Sheriff and Officers with the prisoners."

We have now, we trust, amply redeemed our credit with those who, from some of our introductory remarks, might have supposed us insensible to the beauties of our antient drama; and have proved, to the satisfaction of all our readers, that our quarrel is only with the undiscriminating critics who employ such terms of panegyric, when speaking of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," and "The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse," (see a note by Mr. Weber, Vol. ii. pp. 471. 486.) as ought only to be applied to Macbeth, Lear, and Othello.

ART. IV. A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., on the late Edition of Ford's Plays, chiefly as relating to Ben Jonson. By Octavius Gilchrist, Esq. 8vo. 25. Murray. 1811.

Svo. 25.

ART. V. A Letter to J. P. Kemble, Esq., involving Strictures on a recent Edition of John Ford's Dramatic Works. Printed at Cambridge, for Murray, London. 1811. THESE pamphlets came to our hands after we had written the preceding article. The first is the production of a gentleman already well known to the public, by his masterly defence of the character of Ben Jonson against the rash, illfounded, and probably unjust, attacks of some modern critics. The late editor of Ford's plays, whose sole object (we are sorry to feel ourselves obliged to speak thus severely of him) appears to have been to furnish the booksellers with a certain quantity of commentary within a certain time, picked up and transcribed all the old stories without examining into their refutation; and, by so doing, he has drawn on his own head that chastisement by the hands of Mr. Gilchrist which, we must say, he richly deserved. We have alluded already to the prin cipal subject of the controversy. The internal evidence is, in our judgment, more than sufficient to prove that the pretended verses of Endymion Porter, and the whole story raised on them by Macklin, are a most impudent forgery; and we cannot afford space to enter more at large into Mr. Gilchrist's refutation of that which amply refutes itself.

The lines prefixed by Shirley to his tragedy of Love's Sacrifice, most gratuitously assumed by Malone to have been le

"Look here, thou that hast malice to the stage,

And impudence enough for the whole age; --
Voluminously ignorant! be vex'd

To read this tragedy, and thy own be next.”

velled against Ben Jonson, are also repeated by Mr. Weber; who remarks that " they evidently allude to the insulting ode of Ben Jonson alluded to in the second letter of Mr. Macklin." Now, if Macklin's letters were only an imposture, (which, we think, is self-evident) what becomes of the evident allusion alluded to by Mr. Weber? Such ignorant carelessness merits the seWe have no reason whatever, (besides the dictum of Malone,) for suspecting in Shirley any allusion to Ben Jonson; on the contrary, Mr. Gilchrist has, in this letter, very ably supported a conjecture (which is probable, at least, to say no more of it,) that the person to whom those lines were addressed was no other than Prynne, the author of Histriomastix.

verest censure.

Among various instances of the gross unfitness of Mr. Weber for the office which he has assumed, the same writer notices three plays by Ford (written, it is true, in conjunction with others) of which no mention whatever is made by his commentator. These are The Fairy Knight, and The Bristowe Merchant by Ford and Dekker, and A late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother, by Ford and Webster.

The second of the two pamphlets which have given occasion to the present short article we shall dismiss with less notice; because it comprizes little else than a detection of Mr. Weber in some of his innumerable errors and absurdities. Among them we discover several that we have ourselves remarked in our preceding article:- but we are tired of the subject, and shall not uselessly add to our catalogue of editorial offences by selecting any of the fresh examples which are pointed out in the letter to Mr. Kemble.

If the Fates will have it so," that Mr. Weber is to become editor-general for the commencement of the nineteenth century,

if he will persist in giving us the improved Beaumont and Fletcher which we so humbly deprecate, we have no help for it but to join with the author of this pamphlet in the hope that his late sad failure may render him a little more cautious in future. He can at least desist from converting sense into nonsense by his blunders; and, if he cannot mend the text of his author, he may perhaps take warning, and leave it as he finds it.

A letter to Mr. Weber, on this subject, has also appeared.

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ART. VI. Tales of the Passions; in which is attempted an Illustra tion of their Effects on the Human Mind: each Tale comprized in one Volume, and forming the Subject of a single Passion. By George Moore. Tale II. Jealousy. 8vo. 10s. 6d. Boards. Wilkie and Robinson. 1811.

IN

imitation of Miss Baillie's Plays illustrative of the Passions, Mr. Moore has undertaken a series of Tales. His "Revenge" was analyzed in our lviith volume, N. S. p. 262. In this new production, he maintains the same respectable level of excellence; and without climbing to the eminences of his profession, he walks much above the plain of ordinary novelists. His merit is sufficiently known to secure him an extensive attention but for that attention to be lasting, farther acquirements perhaps are requisite.

Felix Earlvin, a gentleman of fortune in Monmouthshire, is married to the orphan daughter of an officer who had served in the West Indies. On slight provocations, he becomes intemperately jealous; and at length, on meeting his wife in a carriage with another man, he shoots her with a pistol. Happily, however, she recovers, and this paroxysm cures his jealousy. An underplot discovers that Mrs. Earlvin is daughter of a lady with whom her supposed father had eloped, and nearly allied to the West-Indian Onslow, whose presence in her carriage had excited the husband's alarm.

This fable is rendered very intricate by unintelligible relationships between subordinate personages; indeed the entire West-Indian part of the story is improbable, difficult to remember, and not essential to the catastrophe. The characters are well described, while the description remains in the author's hands, but are not well brought into play. The dialogue altogether wants variety; it has every where the same writerlike manner, the same technical formality, as if the conversations had been taken down by a newspaper-reporter. The narrative of Osmond, for instance, which is supposed to be hastily written at midnight, as a solemn death-bed confession, while he is labouring under the agony of bodily wounds and mental remorse, is as diffuse, and as full of antithesis and prettyism of style, as any other part of the book. We quote a specimen of it:

My mother was a woman of high spirit, gay, dissipated, and extravagant. She had been educated under a system of speculation by her parents, with a view that her personal accomplisments would

insure her a splendid alliance. The sums they expended to render her (as they considered) capable of such a station, reduced the comfortable income they possessed to a bare subsistence; and on the day

of

of their daughter's marriage, they became pensioners on the bounty of her husband. I am the eldest of two children which were the fruits of this union. I had the misfortune, I might almost say, the curse, to become the professed and decided favourite of my mother. From the earliest years of my infancy to the days of my manhood, every capricious whim, every wish of my heart, were indulged and gratified with an anxiety that anticipated the desires they created; while my sister, who was two years younger than myself, received little tenderness or attention but what was bestowed from the good-nature and commiseration of the servants employed to take care of her. If my father was aware of the cruelty and injustice of such proceedings, he had not sufficient energy to prevent them. The extravagance of his wife reduced his fortune, while the dissipation in which she involved. him injured his health; and, by the time his children had arrived at years of maturity, he was a poor and infirm man. My mother's pride would not allow her to consent that I should be brought up to any profession, and she even resigned some of her own luxuries to support the expensive pleasures into which I had plunged for want of employment. My vices she termed follies, my daring impetuosity she called spirit; she made me a coxcomb by admiring my person, and hardened my heart by neglecting to teach me humanity. I feel regret, and even horror, in laying these serious accusations on her memory; but when I reflect on the duties of a mother, on the power of her example, and the force of her precepts, I cannot but appreciate the value of her tenderness, and (from fatal experience) feel equally convinced of the cruelty of her neglect. Neither the personal attractions nor the mental accomplishments of my sister, her amiable disposition or affectionate temper, were capable of subduing her mother's unnatural antipathy, which evidently increased as her daughter's beauty and good qualities became more conspicuous, till her envy was excited by her charms, and her ill-humour increased by a consciousness of the superiority of her mind. Under these circumstances, the severity of her conduct increased to so alarming a height, that her daughter was obliged to fly to the protection of a female relative. This person was a sister of my father's, whose husband had lately procured a situation of some consequence in the West Indies, and who had written to his wife an earnest request that she would take the first opportunity of following him to Jamaica, She had long witnessed, with regret and indignation, the miseries of her niece's situation; she had expostulated with her brother on the injustice of his conduct, but without effect; he confessed her observations were correct, yet, to make the arrangements they required, would revolutionise his family, and destroy his domestic peace. Convinced that her niece had no prospect of redress from her father, she proposed that she should accompany her to the West Indies; an offer received with joy and gratitude by my sister, and gladly accepted by her parents. My father's acquiescence to this proposal was perhaps urged by the increasing difficulties of his pecuniary affairs, and the probability such an arrangement held forth of a respectable settlement for his daughter without the usual aid of a dowry,'

Cc 3

We

We can applaud the elegance, but not the propriety, of this style of narration. Agitated minds are more abrupt, more concise, more simple, more strong and pathetic in their expression. It was not, however, on Mr. Osmond that the author wished to concentrate the regard of sensibility, but on Felix. Now the jealousy of the hero is so far unnatural, that it is vague in its object, and he is jealous alternately of Herbert and of Onslow. We should much have preferred to confine the alarm of jealousy to the latter, who, in the attempt to ascertain his relationship with Mrs. Earlvin, might easily give occasion for an equivocal mysteriousness; and we should have been desirous of rendering the reader suspicious as well as the husband, since otherwise the act of the latter in firing the pistol seems to the former only the degrading brutality of a madman.

ART. VII. Sermons, by the Rev. R. Polwhele, Vicar of Manaccan, and of St. Anthony, Cornwall. A new Volume. 8vo. pp. 401. 10s. 6d. Boards. Longman and Co. 1810.

One pro

ONOTONY is not a rare fault among divines. M° minent subject often takes the lead in their thoughts; and whatever be the text, this must be pulled in, as the common people say, head and shoulders. We cannot, however, charge Mr. Polwhele's pulpit-eloquence with this defect. To the charm of variety, he adds the quality of originality; and if his novelties should not be always such as critics and sound biblical scholars will sanction, let them by way of apology for the preacher recollect that Mr. P. is a poet as well as a theologian. When, in the first volume of our new series, p. 303, we noticed a former collection of his discourses, we observed that they were executed with different success; and we can make the same report of those which are now before us. From the article just quoted, it should seem that this new volume does not consist of entirely new matter; since the discourses on the dispersion of the Jews, on the character and state of the Arabs, and on the duties of the Husbandman, are there mentioned, and probably they are here re-published with some slight improvements. As a member of the state, Mr. P. is very loyal; as a member of the church, he is truly orthodox; and as a clergyman, he wishes zealously to discharge the duties of his office. Some of his hearers may think that it is not very delicate in him to specify minutely in what way respect ought to be paid to the clerical character; and others, who are not and will not be his hearers, must think that he deals unfairly by them when he classes them with unbelievers. Dr. Horsley, whose illiberality

was

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