senses as to give a perception of disagreement, with not enough of belief in the internal motives,-all that which is unseen,-to overpower and reconcile the first and obvious prejudices.* What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action; what we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind, and its movements: and this I think may sufficiently account for the very different sort of delight with which the same play so often affects us in the reading and the seeing.

It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those characters in Shakspeare which are within the precincts of nature, have yet something in them which appeals too exclusively to the imagination, to admit of their being made objects to the senses without suffering a change and a diminution,-that still stronger the ob jection must lie against representing another line of characters, which Shakspeare has introduced to give a wildness and a supernatural elevation to his scenes, as if to remove them still farther from that assimilation to common life in which their excellence is vulgarly supposed to consist. When we read the incantations of those terrible beings the Witches in Macbeth, though some of the ingredients of their hellish composition savor of the grotesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most serious and appalling that can be imagined? Do we not feel spell-bound as Macbeth was? Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence? We might as well laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil himself being truly and really present with us. But attempt to bring these beings on to a stage, and you turn them instantly into so many old women, that men and children are to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, that see ing is believing," the sight actually destroys the faith: and the mirth in which we indulge at their expence, when we see these creatures upon a stage, seems to be a sort of indemnification which we make to ourselves for the terror which they put us in when reading made them an object of belief,—when we surrendered up our reason to the poet, as children to their nurses and their elders; and we laugh at our late fears, as children who thought they saw something in the dark, triumph when the bring

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ing

* The error of supposing that because Othello's colour does not offend us in the reading, it should also not offend us in the secing, is just such a fallacy as supposing that an Adam and Eve in a picture shall affect us just as they do in the poem. But in the poem we for a while have Paradisaical sense> given us, which vanish when we see a mar and his wife without clothes in the picture. The Painters themselves feel this, as is apparent by the aukward shifts they have recourse to, to make them look not quite naked by a sort of prophetic anachronism, antedating the invention of fig-leaves. So in the reading of the Play, we see with Desdemona's eyes in the seeing of it, we are forced to look with our own,

ing in of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in - a candle to expose their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no spectators,—a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impenetrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armour over it, Belly Dawson would have fought the devil with such advantages."

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Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the vile mixture which Dryden has thrown into the Tempest: doubtless without some such vicious alloy, the impure ears of that age would never have sate out to hear so much innocence of love as is contained in the sweet courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda. But is the Tempest of Shakspeare at all a subject for stage representation? It is one thing to read of an enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a conjuror brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upoų the senses to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient, Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted, they can only be believed, But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age de mands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is intro duced to aid. A parlour, or a drawing-room, a library opening into a garden,—a garden with an alcove in it,--a street, or the piazza of Covent-garden, does well enough in a scene; we are content to give as much credit to it as it demands; or rather, we think little about it,-it is little more than reading at the top of a page," Scene, a Garden;" we do not imagine ourselves there, but we readily admit the imitation of familiar objects. But to think by the help of painted trees and caverns, which we know to be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island and his lonely cell;* or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown

But Pictures and

* It will be said these things are done in Pictures. Scenes are very different things, Painting is a world of itself, but in scence painting there is the attempt to deceive; and there is the discordancy, never to be got over, between painted scenes and real people.

in, in an interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which the isle was full:the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of sight behind his apparatus, to make us believe that we do indeed hear the chrystal spheres ring out that chime, which if it were to inwrap our fancy long, Milton thinks,

Time would run back and fetch the age of gold,

And speckled vanity

Would sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mold;
Yea Hell itself would pass away,

And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day.

The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more im, possible to be shewn on a stage, than the Enchanted Isle, with its no less interesting and innocent first settlers.

The subject of Scenery is closely connected with that of the Dresses, which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. I remember the last time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes of garment which he varied, the shiftings and re-shiftings, like a Romish priest at mass. The luxury of stageimprovements, and the importunity of the public eye, require this. The coronation robe of the Scottish monarch was fairly a counterpart to that which our King wears when he goes to the Parliament-house,just so full and cumbersome, and set out with ermine and pearls. And if things must be represented, I see not what to find fault with in this. But in reading, what robe are we conscious of? Some dim images of royalty—a crown and sceptre, may float before our eyes, but who shall describe the fashion of it? Do we see in our mind's eye what Webb, or any other robe-maker, could pattern? This is the inevitable conse quence of imitating every thing, to make all things natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy is a fine abstraction. It presents to the fancy just so much of external appearances as to make us feel that we are among flesh and blood, while by far the greater and better part of our imagination is employed upon the thoughts and internal machinery of the character. But in acting, scenery, dress, the most contemptible things, call upon us to judge of their naturalness.

t

Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure which we take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, compared with that quiet delight which we find in the reading of it, to the different feelings with which a Reviewer, and a man that is not a Reviewer, reads a fine poem. The accursed critical habit,—the being called upon to judge and pronounce, must make it quite a different thing to the former. In seeing these plays acted, we are

affected

affected just as Judges. When Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged out; which we know not to be the picture, but only to shew how finely a miniature may be represented. This shewing of every thing, levels all things: it makes tricks, bows and curtesies, of importance. Mrs. S. never got more fame by any thing than by the manner in which she dismisses the guests in the Banquetscene in Macbeth: it is as much remembered as any of her thrilling tones or impressive looks. But does such a trifle as this enter into the imaginations of the readers of that wild and wonderful scene? Does not the mind dismiss the feasters as rapidly as it can? Does it care about the gracefulness of the doing it? But by acting, and judging of acting, all these non-essentials are raised into an importance, injurious to the main interest of the play.

I have hitherto confined my observations to the Tragic parts of Shakspeare; in some future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to his Comedies; and to shew why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are equally incompatible with stage representation. The length to which this essay has aleady run will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently obnoxious to the Amateurs of the Theatre, without going any deeper into the subject at present,

X.

ART. X.-The Feast of the Poets,

LIKE most of the poetical inventions of modern times, the idea of Apollo holding Sessions and Elections is of Italian origin; but having been treated in it's most common-place light, with a stu❤ dious degradation of the God into a mere critic or chairman, it has hitherto received none of those touches of painting, and combinations of the familar and fanciful, of which it appears to be so provocative, and which the following trifle is an attempt to supply. The pieces it has already produced in our language, are the Session of the Poets by Sir John Suckling, another Session by an anonymous author in the first volume of the State Poems, the Trial for the Bays by Lord Rochester, and the Election of a Poet Laureat by Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.

THE FEAST OF THE POETS.

T'OTHER day as Apollo sat pitching his darts,
Through the clouds of November, by fits and by starts,
He began to consider how long it had been,
Since the bards of Old England a session had seen.
'I think,' said the God recollecting, (and then
He fell twiddling a sunbeam, as I may my pen),
"I think-let me see-yes, it was, I declare,—
As far back as the time of that Buckingham there.
And yet I can't see why I've been so remiss,
Unless it may be-and it certainly is-

That since Dryden's true English and Milton's sublime,
1 have fairly been sick of their reason and rhyme.
There was Collins, 'tis true, had a good deal to say,
But the dog had no industry-neither had Gray:

And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits,
Either slept himself stupid, or bloated his wits.*
But ever since Pope spoil'd the ears of the town,
With his cuckoo-song verses, one up and one down,
There has been such a whining, or prosing, by Jove,
I'd as soon have gone down to see Kemble in love.
However, of late as they've rous'd them anew,
I'll e'en go and give them a lesson or two,

And as nothing's done there now-a-days without eating,
See how many souls I can muster worth treating.'

So saying, the God bade his horses walk for'ard,

And leaving them, took a long dive to the nor❜ard;

Tow'rds the Shakspeare he shot; and, as nothing could hinder, Came smack on his legs through the drawing-room window.

And here I could tell, if it was'nt for stopping, How all the town shook as the godhead went pop in, How the poets' eyes sparkled, and brisk blew the airs, And the laurels shot up in the gardens and squares. But fancies so grave,—though I've stores to supply me→ I'd better keep back for a poem I've by me; And shall merely observe, that the girls look'd divine, And the old folks in-doors exclaim'd, Bless us, how fine!'

Apolla

In thinking it necessary to explain this passage, I only wish to deprecate all idea of disrespect to the memory of Thomson. The bloated his wits" alludes to the redundant and tumid character of much of his principal poem; and the "slept himself stupid" to his Castle of Indolence, which certainly falls off most lamentably towards the conclusion, though it is truly exquisite for the most part, particularly in the outset.