With respect to his present tragedy, we could, indeed, enter on a particular examen of the beauties or faults discoverable in the diction, sentiment, plot, or characters; but, in works of this nature, general observation often characterizes more strongly than a particular criticism could do; for it were an easy task to point out those passages in any indifferent author, where he has excelled himself, and yet these comparative beauties, if we may be allowed the expression, may have no real merit at all. Poems, like buildings, have their point of view, and too near a situation gives but a partial conception of the whole. Suffice it, then, if we only add, that this tragedy's want of moral, which should be the groundwork of every fable; the unfolding a material part of the plot in soliloquy; the preposterous distress of a married lady for a former husband, who had been dead near twenty years;* the want of that it was one of the most interesting and pathetic pieces ever exhibited on any theatre. "Should I give it the preference," says he, "to the Merope of Maffei, and to that of Voltaire; should I affirm that it contained more fire and spirit than the former, more tenderness and simplicity than the latter, I might be accused of partiality." Not content with this, he proceeded to declare, that the author possessed the true theatric genius of Shakspeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and the licentiousness of the other.-See Hume's Dedication to his Four Dissertations, and Biog. Dram. vol i. p. 174. "In a letter to a friend, dated August 10, 1757, Mr. Gray says, 'I am greatly struck with the tragedy of Douglas, though it has infinite faults: the author seems to me to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which had been lost for these hundred years; and there is one scene (between Matilda and the old peasant) so masterly, that it strikes me blind to all the defects in the work.'"-Mason's Gray, vol. i. p. 357.] *["The structure of the story somewhat resembles that of Voltaire's Mérope, but is as simple and natural as that of the French author is complicated and artificial. Mérope came out about 1743, and Mr. Home may therefore easily have seen it; but he has certainly derived his more simple and natural tale from the old ballad of Gil Morrice. In memory of this, the tune of Gil Morrice, a simple and beautiful air, is, in Scotland at least, always played while the curtain rises."-Sir WALTER SCOTT, Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 345, edit. 1835.] * [There is something overstrained in the twenty years spent by Lady incidents to raise that fluctuation of hope and fear which interest us in the catastrophe; are all faults we could easily pardon, did poetic fire, elegance, or the heightenings of pathetic distress, afford adequate compensation: but these are dealt to us with a sparing hand. However, as we have perceived some dawnings of genius in this writer, let us not dwell on his imperfections, but rather proceed to show on what particular passage in his performance we have founded our hopes of his brightening, one day, into stronger lustre. Those parts of nature, and that rural simplicity with which the author was, perhaps, best acquainted, are not unhappily described; and hence we are led to conjecture, that a more universal knowledge of nature will probably increase his powers of description. The native innocence of the shepherd Norval is happily expressed; it requires some art to dress the thoughts and phrases of the common people, without letting them swell into bombast, or sink into vulgarity; a fault generally charged upon the English authors, who are remarked by their neighbors of the continent to write too much above, or too much below, every subject they undertake to treat upon. Glenalvon's character is strongly marked, and bears a near resemblance to Shakspeare's 'Richard.' It is thus delineated in the first act : "ANNA. Why speaks my lady thus of Randolph's heir? LADY RANDOLPH. Because he's not the heir of Randolph's virtues. Randolph in deep and suppressed sorrow; nor is it natural, though useful, certainly, to the poet, that her regrets should turn less on the husband of her youth, than upon the new-born child whom she had scarcely seen."-Sir WALTER SCOTT, Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 342.] An artificial image of himself; And he with ease can vary to the taste Yet he is brave, and politic in war."* The following passage is an oblique panegyric on the Union, and contains a pleasing gradation of sentiment. The lines marked in italics demand particular distinction. *["There is something awkward in Lady Randolph's sudden confidence to Anna, as is pointed out by David Hume. The spectator,' says the critic, 'is apt to suspect it was done in order to instruct him; a very good end, but which might have been obtained by a careful and artificial conduct of the dialogue. This is all unquestionably true; but the spectator should, and indeed must, make considerable allowances, if he expects to receive pleasure from the drama. He must get his mind, according to Tony Lumpkin's phrase, into a concatenation accordingly,' since he cannot reasonably expect that scenes of deep and complicated interest shall be placed before him in close succession, without some force being put upon ordinary probability; and the question is not, how far you have sacrificed your judgment in order to accommodate the fiction, but rather what is the degree of pleasure you have received in return. Perhaps, in this point of view, it is scarcely possible for a spectator to make such sacrifices for greater pleasure than we have enjoyed in seeing Lady Randolph personified by the inimitable Siddons. Great as that pleasure was on all occasions, it was increased in a manner which can hardly be conceived, when her son (the late Mr. Henry Siddons) supported his mother, in the character of Douglas, and when the full everflowings of maternal tenderness are authorized, nay, authenticated and realized, by the actual existence of the relationship."-Sir WALTER SCOTT. "Mrs. Siddons told me, that she never found any study (which, in the technical language of the stage, means the getting verses by heart) so easy as that of Douglas, which is one of the best criterions of excellence in the dramatic style."-HENRY MACKENZIE, Life of Home, vol. i. p. 43.] "LADY RANDOLPH.* War I detest; but war with foreign foes, Whose manners, language, and whose looks are strange, Is not so horrid, nor to me so hateful, As that with which our neighbors oft we wage. A river here, and there an idle line By fancy drawn, divides the sister kingdoms. Both for their valor famous through the world. It may not be improper to observe, before we take our leave of this performance, that it was first acted with great applause in Edinburgh; but made its appearance in England under a peculiar disadvantage; the commendation a man of taste had bestowed on it, previous to its representation here, perhaps raised too much expectation in some, and excited a spirit of envy and critical prejudice in others. Possibly, indeed, that gentleman, in ["When this tragedy was originally produced at Edinburgh, the title of the heroine was Lady Barnard: the alteration to Lady Randolph was made on its being transplanted to London."-Jackson's Hist. of the Scottish Stage.] "I have a perfect recollection," says Mr. Mackenzie, "of the strong sensation that Douglas produced in Edinburgh. I was present at the first representation; the applause was enthusiastic; but a better criterion of its merits was the tears of the audience, which the tender parts of the drama drew forth unsparingly. The town was in an uproar of exultation, that a some degree, sacrificed his taste to his friendship. However, if this was the case, he will sustain no great loss with regard to his reputation, since he may gain as much on the one hand, as he can lose on the other; the worst that can be said amounting only to this, that the benevolence of his disposition prevailed over the rectitude of his judgment.* Scotsman should write a tragedy of the first rate, and that its merits were first submitted to them." The appearance, however, of a tragedy written by a clergyman, gave such offence to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, that the author, to escape degradation, abdicated his pulpit.] · * ["As we sat over our tea, at Inverary, Mr. Home's tragedy of Douglas was mentioned. I put Dr. Johnson in mind, that once, in a coffee-house at Oxford, he called to old Mr. Sheridan, How came you, Sir, to give Home a gold medal for writing that foolish play?' and defied Mr. Sheridan to show ten good lines in it. He did not insist that they should be put together; but that there were not ten good lines in the whole play. He now persisted in this. I endeavored to defend that pathetic and beautiful tragedy, and repeated the following passage: JOHNSON. 'Sincerity, Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave Thy onward path, although the earth should gape And from the gulf of hell destruction cry, To take dissimulation's winding way.' That will not do, Sir, nothing is good but what is consistent with probability, which this is not. Juvenal, indeed, gives us a noble picture of inflexible virtue: 'Esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem, Summum crede nefas animam præferre pudori, Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'1 "He repeated the lines with great force and dignity; then added, ‘And after this comes Johnny Home, with his earth-gaping, and his destructioncrying,'-pooh!"—Boswell, vol. v. p. 106, edit. 1835.] 1 ["Be brave, be just; and, when your country's laws Call you to witness in a dubious cause, Though Phalaris plant his bull before your eye, And, frowning, dictate to your lips the lie, Think it a crime no tears can e'er efface, To purchase safety, with compliance base, And sacrifice for life, life's only end."-GIFFORD.] |