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of the cause, by a strong imagination of the effects which are to follow from it. He is also very successful in his character of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. They describe the passions at their height, not in their progress-the extremes, not the gradations of feeling. Their plays, however, have great power and great beauty. The Faithful Shepherdess' is the origin of Milton's Comus. • Rule a Wife and Have a Wife' is one of the very best comedies that ever was written; and holds, to this day, undisputed possession of the stage. Yet, as our critic observes, there is in the general tone of their writings a certain crudeness and precocity, a heat, a violence of fermentation, a disposition to carry every thing to excess, which is not pleasant. Their plays are very much what young noblemen of genius might be supposed to write in the heyday of youthful blood, the sunshine of fortune, and all the petulance of self-opinion. They have completely anticipated the German paradoxes. Schlegel has no mercy on the writers of the age of Charles II. He compares Dryden himself to a man walking upon stilts in a morass.' He justly prefers Otway to Rowe; but we think he is wrong in supposing, that if Otway had lived longer he would have done better. His plays are only the ebullitions of a fine, enthusiastic, sanguine temperament: and his genius would no more have improved with age, than the beauty of his person. Of our comic writers, Congreve, Wycherley, Vanburgh, &c. M. Schlegel speaks very contemptuously and superficially. It is plain that he knows nothing about them, or he would not prefer Farquhar to all the rest. If, after our earlier dramatists, we have any class of writers who are excellent, it is our comic writers.

We cannot go into our author's account of the Spanish drama. The principal names in it are Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope de Vega. Neither can we agree in the praises which he lavishes on the dramatic productions of these authors. They are too flowery, lyrical, and descriptive. They are pastorals, not tragedies. They have warmth; but they want vigour.

Our author may be supposed to be at home in German literature; but his doctrines appear to us to be more questionable there, than upon any other subject. What the German dramatists really excel in, is the production of effect: but this is the very thing which their fastidious countryman most despises and abhors. They really excel all others in mere effect; and there is no nation that can excel all others in more than one thing. Werter is, in our opinion, the best of all Goethe's works; but because it is the most popular, our author takes an opportunity to express his contempt for it. Count Egmont, which is here spoken highly of, seems to us a most insipid and preposterous

composition. The effect of the pathos which is said to lie concealed in it, is utterly lost upon us. Nathan the Wise,' by Lessing, is also a great favourite of Schlegel; because it is unintelligible except to the wise. As the French plays are composed of a tissue of commonplaces, the German plays of this stamp are a tissue of paradoxes, which have no foundation in nature or common opinion,-the pure offspring of the author's fantastic brain. For the same reason, Schiller's Wallenstein is here preferred to his Robbers. But we cannot so readily give up our old attachment to the Robbers. The first reading of that play is an event in every one's life, which is not to be forgotten.

Madame de Staël has very happily ridiculed this pedantic taste in criticism.

By a singular vicissitude in taste, it has happened, that the Germans at first attacked our dramatic writers, as converting all their heroes into Frenchmen. They have, with reason, insisted on historic truth as necessary to contrast the colours, and give life to the poetry. But then, all at once, they have been weary of their own success in this way, and have produced abstract representations, in which the relations of mankind were expressed in a general manner, and in which time, place and circumstance, passed for nothing. In a drama of this kind by Goethe, the author calls the different cha racters the Duke, the King, the Father, the Daughter, &c. without any other designation.

Such a tragedy is only calculated to be acted in the palace of Odin, where the dead still continue their different occupations on earth; where the hunter, himself a shade, eagerly pursues the shade of a stag; and fantastic warriors combat together in the clouds. It should appear, that Goethe at one period conceived an absolute disgust to all interest in dramatic compositions. It was sometimes to be met with in bad works; and he concluded, that it ought to be banished from good ones. Nevertheless, a man of superior mind ought not to disdain what gives universal pleasure; he cannot relinquish his resemblance with his kind, if he wishes to make others feel his own value. Granting that the tyranny of custom often introduces an artificial air into the best French tragedies, it cannot be denied that there is the same want of natural expression in the systematic and theoretical productions of the German muse. If exaggerated declamation is affected, there is a certain kind of intellectual calm which is not less so. It is a kind of arrogated superiority over the affections of the soul, which may accord very well with philosophy, but is totally out of character in the dramatic art. Goethe's works are composed according to different principles and systems. In the Tasso and Iphigenia, he conceives of tragedy as a lofty relic of the monuments of antiquity. These works have all the beauty of form, the splendour and glossy smoothness of marble;-but they are as cold and as motionless.

We have, we trust, said enough of this work, to recommend it to the reader: We ought to add, that the translation appears to be very respectable.

ART. V. Culloden Papers; comprising an Extensive and Interesting Correspondence, from the Year 1625 to 1748. London, 1815. 1 vol. 4to. pp. 479.

TH HE Culloden Papers are a collection of documents, consisting chiefly of letters of correspondence, which were lately found in Culloden House, belonging to the family of Forbes, in the vicinity of Inverness. That family has long been distinguished as the head, or principal member (it is now indifferent which) of one of the great Highland clans, and was formerly still more conspicuous by the share which it took in all the public transactions of its native land. But the most brilliant and honourable part of its history, is that which records the life of DUNCAN FORBES, who died President of the Court of Session in the year 1747. This eminent man raised himself to that high station by the unassisted excellence of a noble character, by the force of which he had previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of office. He took the lead in all affairs touching Scotland for nearly half of the last century-was particularly active during the two rebellions-maintained a constant intercourse with all the great men of his day, both Scotch and English-and died, leaving behind him a bright and unenvied reputation, of which the recollection is scarcely yet effaced in this country-and a mass of papers, which were thrown, without arrangement or explanation, into cellars or other such places, where it was thought they would be safe or out of the way.

These documents, though often suspected to exist, and anxiously searched for, lay undisturbed in their fastnesses till the year 1812, when two large chests and three sacks full of them were discovered. A selection was instantly made and prepared for the press, with as much order and connexion as was attainable. This was not much; but it was rather diminished than increased, by the discovery of another mass, after the printing of the first had commenced. For, instead of beginning the work anew, it was thought better to go on with the original plan, and to throw such of the other papers as were meant for publication into the form of Addenda. This resolution may have been recommended by immediate convenience, but it was certainly very unfortunate; for the separation of papers relating to the same events, and intended as parts of the same series of communications, has greatly increased the distraction and confusion of the

whole. It is to be regretted, too, that although there is an ill written and feeble life at the beginning of the work, there is scarcely any explanatory narrative or observation interspersed throughout its different parts. That there should be letters. without answers, and answers without the previous letters, was a misfortune for which the editor was not responsible. But a very little diligence might easily have procured a great deal of information with respect to the persons and the events referred to in the correspondence; whereas the writers are brought forward with as little introduction as if they were all personally known to us; and the transactions, as if they had just happened in the neighbouring parish. This creates a constant glimmering and shifting of the light, which renders the perusal of the collection singularly painful and unsatisfactory; and as we profess to know little or nothing of the details to which it relates, except what we can catch here and there from this work, it is probable that our conceptions of most of them are imperfect or erroneous.

Still, however, there are some circumstances which render the publication extremely interesting. It exhibits a view, taken on the spot, of a period of Scottish history and manners which is fast receding from our sight, but of which the features are well worthy of being retained. Between the birth and the death of Forbes, this country passed from the fire of the most cruel religious and political persecution, into nearly its present state of freedom and toleration. It was the chief scene of the two last struggles made by the Stuarts for the recovery of what they termed their rights: The foundation of its subsequent growth in agriculture-trade and manufactures-were laid; the great men of the last century, to whom it owes its literary and philosophical splendour, were beginning to appear; and, above all, Forbes himself displays one of those characters which are sometimes to be found in what Hume calls the corners of history,' but which deserve to be blazoned at large on its broadest page. He is in every situation so full of honour, of gentleness, of true wisdom, of kindness and intrepidity, that we doubt if there be any one public man of this part of the Empire, or of the age that is gone, whose qualities ought to be so strongly recommended to the contemplation of all those who wish truly to serve their country.

As there is nothing very particular in the letters until he appears, nor any connexion between the different parts of the work after this, except what arises from their reference to him, the best way in which we can exhibit a view of its contents is by mentioning a few of the principal events and objects of his life.

He was born in the year 1685, of parents who transmitted their estate to his elder brother, and to all their children an heyeditary aversion to the house of Stuart, which they appear to

have resisted from the very commencement of the civil wars, and upon the true grounds on which that resistance ought to have been made. After learning to read and write at the parish school of Inverness, he came to Edinburgh when a youth. He distinguished himself at the University here for three years; and then, in 1705, according to the custom of the age, was sent to a foreign seminary, which, in his case, happened to be Leyden. He remained there two years, deeply engaged in study, chiefly of law and languages;-of the latter of which he was somewhat extravagantly fond for a man of business, and especially of the Eastern tongues,-insomuch, that before he died he had read the bible eight times over in Hebrew. He returned to Scotland about the time that the Union between the two kingdoms was settled; and in July 1709 was called to the bar.

The very first step of his public life, was an earnest of the firmness of his character, and the independence of his principles. He was solicited by the Duke of Argyll, then by far the most eminent person in Scotland, to take charge, as legal adviser, of the management of his magnificent estates. He agreed to do so; but considering the employment, which was not in the regular line of his profession, as one which nothing but its being disinterested, could dignify, he rejected the remuneration that was offered of about six hundred pounds a yearbeing a sum at that time equal to the salary of the highest law officer of the crown. He was soon appointed Sheriff of MidLothian; and discharged the duties of that office in a manner which showed that he was secretly forming himself for those higher judicial functions in which his best fame was destined to be reaped. His professional progress, though rapid from the very first, which in no line is favourable to steady or to high attainments, continued extensive and brilliant. It carried him frequently to the House of Lords-a circumstance which is now only remarkable, as it led to the formation of friendships in London which ever afterwards connected him with all the eminent men of the age. Hence this Collection is enriched by letters from Sir Robert Walpole, the Dukes of Newcastle and Argyll, Lords Hardwicke and Mansfield, Mr Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, Speaker Onslow, General Oglethorpe, and many others in England-besides all the famous men in Scotland without exception. He married early, but soon lost his wife, and ever after remained a widower. He had a turn for the lighter kinds of poetry; and there were lately old people in existence, by whom a grey rock in the wood,' where he composed a song, still current, on his lady, was held in veneration.

When the Pretender made his attempt in 1715, the whole family of Culloden exerted itself to put down an usurper who claimed the throne as his inheritance, and not as the people's