sion.

BUT POWERFUL AND LOFTY.

393

considers a tragedy as a poem. In England, we look upon it rather as a representation of character and pasWith them, of course, the style and diction, and the congruity and proportions of the piece, are the main objects; -with us, the truth and the force of the imitation. It is sufficient for them, if there be character and action enough to prevent the composition from languishing, and to give spirit and propriety to the polished dialogue of which it consists ;- we are satisfied, if there be management enough in the story not to shock credibility entirely, and beauty and polish enough in the diction to exclude disgust or derision. In his own way, Alfieri, we think, is excellent. His fables are all admirably contrived and completely developed; his dialogue is copious and progressive; and his characters all deliver natural sentiments with great beauty, and often with great force of expression. In our eyes, however, it is a fault that the fable is too simple, and the incidents too scanty; and that all the characters express themselves with equal felicity, and urge their opposite views and pretensions with equal skill and plausibility. We see at once, that an ingenious author has versified the sum of a dialogue; and never, for a moment, imagine that we hear the real persons contending. There may be more eloquence and dignity in this style of dramatising;there is infinitely more deception in ours.

With regard to the diction of these pieces, it is not for tramontane critics to presume to offer any opinion. They are considered, in Italy, we believe, as the purest specimens of the favella Toscana that late ages have produced. To us they certainly seem to want something of that flow and sweetness to which we have been accustomed in Italian poetry, and to be formed rather upon the model of Dante than of Petrarca. At all events, it is obvious that the style is highly elaborate and artificial; and that the author is constantly striving to give it a sort of factitious force and energy, by the use of condensed and emphatic expressions, interrogatories, antitheses, and short and inverted sentences. In all these respects, as well as in the chastised gravity of the senti

394 CONTRAST BETWEEN HIS PLAYS AND CHARACTER.

ments, and the temperance and propriety of all the delineations of passion, these pieces are exactly the reverse of what we should have expected from the fiery, fickle, and impatient character of the author. From all that Alfieri has told us of himself, we should have expected to find in his plays great vehemence and irregular eloquence-sublime and extravagant sentiments-passions rising to frenzy-and poetry swelling into bombast. Instead of this we have a subdued and concise representation of energetic discourses-passions, not loud but deep-and a style so severely correct and scrupulously pure, as to indicate, even to unskilful eyes, the great labour which must have been bestowed on its purification. No characters can be more different than that which we should infer from reading the tragedies of Alfieri, and that which he has assigned to himself in these authentic memoirs.

The Life and Posthumous Writings of WILLIAM COWPER, Esq. With an Introductory Letter to the Right Honourable Earl Cowper. By WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. Chichester: 1803.

THIS book is too long; but it is composed on a plan that makes prolixity unavoidable. Instead of an account of the poet's life, and a view of his character and performances, the biographer has laid before the public a large selection from his private correspondence, and merely inserted as much narrative between each series of letters, as was necessary to preserve their connection, and make the subject of them intelligible.

This scheme of biography, which was first introduced, we believe, by Mason, in his life of Gray, has many evident advantages in point of liveliness of colouring, and fidelity of representation. It is something intermediate between the egotism of confessions, and the questionable narrative of a surviving friend, who must be partial, and may be mistaken: It enables the reader to judge for himself, from materials that were not provided for the purpose of determining his judgment; and holds up to him, instead of a flattering or unfaithful portrait, the living lineaments and features of the person it intends to commemorate. It is a plan, however, that requires so much room for its execution, and consequently so much money and so much leisure in those who wish to be masters of it, that it ought to be reserved, we conceive, for those great and eminent characters that are likely to excite an interest among all orders and generations of mankind. While the biography of Shakespeare and Bacon shrinks into the corner of an octavo, we can scarcely help wondering that the history of the sequestered life and solitary studies of Cowper should have extended into two quarto volumes.

396

COWPER HIS EARLY LIFE.

The little Mr. Hayley writes in these volumes is by no means well written; though certainly distinguished by a very amiable gentleness of temper, and the strongest appearance of sincere veneration and affection for the departed friend to whose memory it is consecrated. It will be very hard, too, if they do not become popular; as Mr. Hayley seems to have exerted himself to conciliate readers of every description, not only by the most lavish and indiscriminate praise of every individual he has occasion to mention, but by a general spirit of approbation and indulgence towards every practice and opinion which he has found it necessary to speak of. Among the other symptoms of book making which this publication contains, we can scarcely forbear reckoning the expressions of this too obsequious and unoffending philanthropy.

The constitutional shyness and diffidence of Cowper appeared in his earliest childhood, and was not subdued in any degree by the bustle and contention of a Westminster education; where, though he acquired a considerable portion of classical learning, he has himself declared, that "he was never able to raise his eye above the shoe-buckles of the elder boys, who tyrannized over him." From this seminary, he seems to have passed, without any academical preparation, into the Society of the Inner Temple, where he continued to reside to the age of thirty-three. Neither his biographer nor his letters give any satisfactory account of the way in which this large and most important part of his life was spent. Although Lord Thurlow was one of his most intimate associates, it is certain that he never made any proficiency in the study of the law; and the few slight pieces of composition, in which he appears to have been engaged in this interval, are but a scanty produce for fifteen years of literary leisure. That a part of those years was very idly spent, indeed, appears from his own account of them. In a letter to his cousin, in 1786, he says,

"I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years in his house; but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton Row, as you very well remember.

MORBID AND CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFIDENCE. 397

There was I, and the future Lord Chancellor, constantly employed from morning to night, in giggling, and making giggle, instead of studying the law."-vol. i. p. 178.

And in a more serious letter to Mr. Rose, he makes the following just observations.

"The colour of our whole life is generally such as the three or four first years, in which we are our own masters, make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society; a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. But three years misspent in an attorney's office, were almost of course followed by several more equally misspent in the Temple; and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, ' Sto qui.'-The only use I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to serve in terrorem to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that they may escape (so far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate.' vol. i. p. 333, 334.

Neither the idleness of this period, however, nor the gaiety in which it appears to have been wasted, had corrected that radical defect in his constitution, by which he was disabled from making any public display of his acquisitions; and it was the excess of this diffidence, if we rightly understand his biographer, that was the immediate cause of the unfortunate derangement that overclouded the remainder of his life. In his thirty-first year, his friends procured for him the office of readingclerk to the House of Lords; but the idea of reading in public, was the source of such torture and apprehension to him, that he very soon resigned that place, and had interest enough to exchange it for that of clerk of the journals, which was supposed to require no personal attendance. An unlucky dispute in Parliament, however, made it necessary for him to appear in his place; and the consequences of this requisition are stated by Mr. Hayley, in the following, not very lucid, account.

"His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason: for although he had endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which made him conceive, that whatever knowledge he might previously