Orestes of Euripides; and to the dusky wall of shields,' the exquisite propriety of which epithet no reader of Homer but must admire. These minute, characteristic touches-which are all let drop accidentally, as it were-are such as could only have been supplied by one who combined a scholar's knowledge of the classic times, with a poet's imagination to colour, shape, and breathe the breath of life into that knowledge. It is curious to note the contrast that exists between the genius of Mr. Talfourd and that of his distinguished contemporary, Mr. Sheridan Knowles. Successful as both dramatists are, the one possesses scarcely a single attribute in common with the other. The former represents the classic school of art, with all its serene, emphatic majesty, and fixed unity of purpose by which the same coherence and consistency are given to the different parts of a story, as to the different limbs of a statue. The latter is a revival of the Elizabethan dramatists, with all their fervid, irregular, tumultuous crowd of emotions, and all their wilful disregard of keeping, in point of details. In Mr. Talfourd's plays we see that everything has been studiously arranged beforehand; nothing is left to the caprice of the moment to the chapter of accidents. The plot is uniformly simple and gradual in its development; and, once set fairly a-going, it never halts or retrogrades, but moves steadily on to the crowning catastrophe. Yet simple, even to severity, as it is, it is never too obvious, but keeps alive curiosity at every stage of its progress. Mr. Knowles, on the other hand, is faulty to a degree in the construction of his plots, and raises expectation in one act, only to disappoint it in the next. Like some generous, high-mettled racer, he sets out on his course with uncommon vigour; but, being unable to husband his energies, he runs himself out of breath before he has got half-way to the goal. Seldom, if ever, do his incidents follow in natural sequence; and in working them up, he is apt to adopt a principle of favouritism with them-that is to say, he lavishes all his great powers on one, to the manifest detriment of the rest. Hence, though he has many noble, impassioned scenes, full of life, and studded with poetic gems of the purest water, he has not yet produced one highly-finished drama. As regards diction, Mr. Talfourd is elegant, harmonious, and occasionally somewhat florid; Mr. Knowles, rough, epigrammatic, abrupt, and in his more familiar dialogues fond of affecting a republican homeliness of manner. To this we can have no objection; but we do most earnestly protest against his frequent adoption of the quaint, obsolete phraseology of the Elizabethan age, which is as great an error of taste as would be the revival of a ghost, or a fairy, or a hamadryad, in a modern poem or romance. main object of a dramatist should be, to copy living nature to the satisfaction of living judges; but this he can only partially accomplish, if he is constantly having recourse to a colloquial style in which men have long since ceased to express themselves. We do not find that Shakspeare affects the dialect of Chaucer. In the conception of character Mr. Talfourd exhibits great loftiness of thought and sentiment; Mr. Knowles rarely soars above the ordinary level of humanity, but when he sets out with the heroic, as in the instance of John of Procida,' he seems to feel that he has essayed a flight above his capacity, and quickly subsides into the domestic, where he is at home, if ever dra

matist was.

The

The truthful energy and impassioned character of Mr. Knowles's genius have been much-and deservedly so-commended, but we know not that even in his happiest moods he has shown more unaffected vigour than Serjeant Talfourd; who, when circumstances require it, can be concise and energetic enough, knowing well that it is not passion's wont to fritter itself away in prolix declamation. In justification of our assertion we shall take leave to quote one or two passages from the Athenian Captive.' Here is a startling delineation of a murderer's state of mind in solitude :

'Again I stand within this awful ball!

I found the entrance here, without the sense
Of vision; for a foul and clinging mist,
Like the damp vapour of a long-closed vault,
Is round me. Now, its objects start to sight

Orestes, while reclining on his couch, imagines himself haunted by the furies, and the phantom of his murdered mother, and gives vent to his mental agonies in the following terrible lines, which the Learned Serjeant no doubt had in his eye while portraying some of the horrors that beset the brain of the remorse-stricken Thoas:

ω μητερ, ικετεύω σε, μη 'πισειε μοι
τας αιματωπους και δρακοντώδεις κόρας"
αυται, γαρ, αυται πλησιον θρώσκουσι μου,
ω Φοιβή, αποκτενουσι μ' αι κυνωπίδες,
γοργωπες, ενερων τέραι, δειναι θεαι,

With terrible distinctness! Crimson stains
Break sudden on the walls! The fretted roof
Grows living!-Let me hear a human voice,
Or I shall play the madman !"

In the above passage the reader will not fail to admire the emphatic significance of the epithet sudden,' and the ghastly image of the hall swarming with strange, silent life! The same deep chord of emotion is struck in the following brief dialogue, which concludes with one of the most striking thoughts in the whole range of modern dramatic literature:

'THOAS.

I have drunk fiercely at a mountain spring,
And left the stain of blood in its pure waters;
It quenched my mortal thirst, and I rejoiced,
For I seemed grown to dæmon, till the stream
Cooled my hot throat, and then I laughed aloud
To find that I had something human still!

PENTHEUS.

Fret not thy noble heart with what is past.

THOAS.

No! 'tis not past!—The murderer has no Past ;
But one eternal Present!'

How beautiful, in a gentler and healthier spirit, is Mr. Talfourd's description of Athens! The versification is as smooth and polished as Parian marble; and the closing sentiment, where the vision of the glorious city is represented as interesting the spectator, chiefly by reason of its reminding him of home, gives a touching and mellowing human interest to the passage:—

'Athens;

Her groves, her halls, her temples, nay, her streets,
Have been my teachers!-Fatherless, I made
The city and her skies my home; have watch'd
Her various aspects with a child's fond Love;
Hung in chill morning o'er the mountain's brow,
And, as the dawn broke slowly, seen her grow
Majestic from the darkness, 'till she fill'd
The sight and soul alike; enjoy'd the storm
Which wrapt her in the mantle of its cloud,
While every flash that shiver'd it reveal'd
Some exquisite proportion, pictured once
And ever to the gazer-stood entranced
In rainy moonshine, as, one side, uprose
A column'd shadow, ponderous as the rock
Which held the Titan groaning with the sense
Of Jove's injustice; on the other, shapes
Of dreamlike softness drew the fancy far
Into the listening air-but most I felt
Her loveliness when summer evening tints
Gave to my lonely childhood sense of home.'

We might adduce many other passages of equal excellence with those which we have just quoted; but enough, we think, have been given to justify the terms in which we have spoken of Mr. Talfourd as a dramatist. Be it remembered, too, to his lasting credit, that in all his tragedies he has steadily kept one great object in view-namely, to raise our estimate of humanity by bringing into play all that is noble and redeeming in man's nature, and vindicating his high destiny as a thinking and responsible being.