themselves (as indeed they have been)—might as well be clothed with flesh and blood, and brought into dramatic action, as most of the creatures of imagination that figure away in allegory.

Dramatic Poetry.

The dramatic form of poetry is so near an approach to the language and intercourse of real life, as, when skilfully constructed, to imply all the actions exhibited on the stage to the eye, through the words addressed to the ear, by the conversation of the persons, in the course of the scene. The opening of the first Act of Hamlet will most admirably illustrate this. Horatio and Marcellus join the sentinels Francisco and Bernardo, at night, on the platform before the castle of Elsinore. There is bodily motion expressed or indicated in every one of the brief challenges and responses between the parties, which being closed, Horatio enquires

"What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

I have seen nothing.

BERNARDO.

MARCELLUS.

Horatio says, 'tis but our phantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us;
Therefore I have entreated him, along

With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.

HORATIO.

Tush! tush! 'twill not appear.

BERNARDO.

Sit down awhile;

And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

HORATIO.

Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Last night of all,

BERNARDO.

When yon same star that 's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself-
The bell then beating one

MARCELLUS.

Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

BERNARDO.

In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

MARCELLUS.

Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

MARCELLUS.

Speak to it, Horatio.

HORATIO.

What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee

speak!

MARCELLUS.

It is offended.

BERNARDO.

See! it stalks away.

HORATIO.

Stay; speak speak, I charge thee, speak.

MARCELLUS.

'Tis gone, and will not answer."

Here every line is alive with action, as well as voice, to communicate in every clause fresh intelligence of the feelings of the speakers, and to bring out their individual characters; but, above all, to intimate, in the simplest manner, those awakening circumstances of the tragic story about to be developed, with the time, place, and manner of its occurrence, which are calculated to prepare the mind of the reader or spectator for the sequel. It is remarkable, that in the progress of more than forty interlocutions, involving four distinct scenes, by the change of persons, within

less than fourscore lines from the opening of this play, there is no necessity for a single stage direction:-every look, attitude, and movement of the six characters (including the Ghost) being so infallibly indicated, that not the minutest particle which can give poetic or picturesque effect to the reality of the spectacle is omitted. This is the consummation of dramatic art, hiding itself behind the unveiled form of nature.

The foregoing illustration is all that the limits of these Essays will allow on the subject of theatrical entertainments. Of the morality of the stage I have nothing to say, except that, in proportion as the style of dramatic composition has been purified, the talent displayed by writers, in what ought to be at once the most directly moral and constitutionally sublime species of verse, has become less and less conspicuous. Without disparagement either to virtue or genius, sufficient reasons might be assigned for such an anomaly, but this is not the fit occasion for explaining them. With a few honourable exceptions, among which may be named the tragedies of Miss Mitford and Mr. Sheridan Knowles,- the efforts of our contemporaries in this field have been less successful in deserving success, than in any other walk of polite literature. I refer solely to acting plays. Mrs. Joanna Baillie, the Rev. H. Millman, the Rev. G. Croly, Messrs. Coleridge, Sotheby, and some others, have written Tragedies for the mind and the heart, which rank among the noblest productions of the age.

A very different judgment must be passed on the dramas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of these, notwithstanding the treasures of poetry buried in them, have been abandoned to an obscurity as ignominious as oblivion, on account of their atrocious profligacy;-like forsaken mines, no longer worked, though their veins are rich with ore, because of the mephitic air that fouls their passages, and which no safety-lamp yet invented can render innoxious to the most intrepid virtue. It is grievous to think, that so many of the most powerful minds that ever were sent into this world to beautify and bless mankind, like morning stars with loveliest light, or vernal rains with healing influence, should have been perverted from their course into malignant luminaries, or from their purpose into sour, cold mildews, blighting and blasting the earth and its inhabitants, so far as their evil beams could strike, or their deadly drops could fall. It is true, that they represented man as he was, not as he ought to have been ;-not as he might have been—had poets always done their duty, and exhibited vice as vice, and virtue as virtue, instead of making each wear the disguise of the other; associating valour, wit, generosity, and other splendid qualities, with earthly, sensual, devilish appetites and passions: whereby the multitude, who possessed none of these brilliant endowments, were confirmed in their beloved vices; while those who were constitutionally or affectedly gallant, facetious, and affable, were induced to imagine, that, with these holiday virtues, they might indulge in the grossest propensi