Fiordeliza. Not much, you think? | To look upon the lands that you have lost. Well, be it much or little, 'tis enough; Silisco. To look upon the days that I have He has his faults. lost, Rosalba. they? Recount me them; what are Fiordeliza. I'll pick you out a few; my He's grave; his coming puts a jest to flight Rosalba. A growling great she-bear that he calls Rosalba. The rudeness is no virtue; but Of that she-bear, a worser vice might pass. -once He was run-over by a funeral. these be all, Ruggiero, brings me less; and here I thought That very childhood bitterly upbraids Where thoughtless sports had lawful time and The manly child rebukes the childish man; Than that of courts, have laid their brutal On those that claim'd my tendance; want and vice He may have failings; but if And injury and outrage fill'd my lands, I would that others were as innocent. And, in a special charity, wishest well In many a vigil of her last sick-bed Would end not so, but with the season change; For time, she said, which makes the serious soft, Turns lightness into hardness.". Vol. iii. p 22. This theme is resumed in a later part of the play, when Silisco, to escape his creditors, flies from the court and takes refuge on the lands of Malespina. It will serve as an illustration of that deep moral seriousness which underlies the gayety of this play :— "Ruggiero. Why hither? It can bring you little joy Whilst I, who saw it not, my substance threw Flowers breathed your breath, winds chanted | Men's spirits from the deep; that pain may The following passage embodies Mr. Taylor's philosophy of art, His poetry, and especially this play, may be considered as a practical exemplification of it. "Silisco. We'll have the scene where Brutus from the bench Condemns his son to death. 'Twas you Ruggiero, Made me to love that scene. Manager. I think, my Lord, Oh, you did, you did; Yet still with reservations: and might I speak My untaught mind to you that know your art, I should beseech you not to stare and gasp And quiver, that the infection of the sense May make our flesh to creep; for as the hand By tickling of our skin may make us laugh More than the wit of Plautus, so these tricks May make us shudder. But true art is this, To set aside your sorrowful pantomime, Pass by the senses, leave the flesh at rest, And working by the witcheries of words Felt in the fulness of their import, call thus Be glorified, and passion flashing out chasm, Awful, but not terrific. Manager. True, my Lord: Enhances what of more heroic vein In truth to Nature missing truth to Art; The criticism of Silisco on the histrionic art is applicable not less to the art poetic, and its suggestions were never more needed than in our day. We live in a "fast age," but if "he that runs may read," it is to be feared that he will prefer what is written in the largest and coarsest characters, to what requires a more steadfast attention. Loud words, big words, odd words, will recommend themselves more than the unob"words felt trusive witcheries of common in the fulness of their import." But what the eye takes in as quickly as the advertisements that adorn a railway station, it forgets no less rapidly. The poetry that lasts is that which embodies thoughts, but so embodies them that they sink at once upon the slumbering feeling and wake it into life. But the thoughts which have this talismanic power must be something more than striking, or even original thoughts. They must be true thoughts. Thoughts of a lower class may be had in any numbers, thick as the "motes that people the sunbeam," and darken what they so people, but they are barren thoughts. The extracts we have given are not sufficient to illustrate the singular variety of this play, but we can find room for only one more. It should be premised that Lisana is the daughter of Gerbetto, the king's physician. The king has formed an attachment to her, and pursues it with all the unscrupulousness that belongs to absolute power. Lisana, however, has been betto when he follows Count Ugo on his committed to the care of Ruggiero by Gerpilgrimage. Defying the king's displeasure, Ruggiero has saved Lisana by withdrawing her from court when its snares are closing around her. He places her in the convent | his brother. It was perhaps about the worst of San Paolo, of which his aunt is abbess, and most anarchical period of the middle and in the stillness of that retreat her bet- ages. The king was loved by his people, and ter mind returns to her, and the passion deserved their love, for in the intervals of that tormented her takes flight. his malady he devoted himself to their interests with a tender and profound solici tude. He is described in this play with a mournful pathos. "Ere waned one moon Of her novitiate, it had pass'd away Like the soft tumult of a summer storm." The Duke of Burgundy is a man of blood, fierce, with a shrewd intellect (the instru She now bids adieu to her deliverer be- ment of ungovernable passions), a domineerfore taking the veil : : My eyes shall never more behold your face Till, looking through the grave and gate death, I see it glorified and like to His of Who raised it; but I will not waste a sigh ing pride, and a will that knows no law. The Duke of Orleans has not escaped the contamination of a dissolute court, more disposed to respect religion in its outward forms than to obey its commands, but he has about him much that is good, and more that is specious. He is frank, generous, loyal, and devotedly attached to his brother, whom he resembles in his personal beauty and in love for his country. His kindly and courteous manners make him a favourite of the people, while his learning and accomplishments recommend him to the clergy. He represents the chivalry of his age; but it was a chivalry dying out. The spirit of self-sacrifice, the virtuous zeal, and the reverence for purity had left it, and consequently the child-like faith of the middle ages was daily becoming more enervated with those childish superstitions from which neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy secures the unspiritual and sensual. Chivalry retained its bright accost and winning grace, but the graver heart had departed from it, and the savage fierceness of the feudality it had covered was working out again through the thin disguise. St. Clements Eve is, in power and ability, among the best of Mr. Taylor's Dramas, but in some respects it is less satisfactory than it is remarkable. Both in its success and its short-comings it signally illustrates the philosophy of the drama. It is as masculine a work as Philip van Artevelde. It is also far more condensed, and the action is more rapid. But the subject throws a gloom over the play darker than that which tragedy reWe now proceed to Mr. Taylor's latest quires. We leave it with a feeling of sadtragedy, St. Clement's Eve. This play takes ness, the result not merely, or chiefly, of a up the tale of European society where it fatal catastrophe, but of the absence of nowas left off in Philip van Artevelde, but il-ble characters sufficient to balance the iglustrates it as it existed in France, not Flanders. Charles the Sixth, the boy-king, by whom so bright a light was thrown over the second part of Van Artevelde, is presented to us again, but this time in eclipse. He was subject to recurring fits of madness, during which the kingdom was torn to pieces by the rivalries of the Duke of Burgundy, the king's cousin, and the Duke of Orleans, noble and the wicked. We have no right to quarrel with a dramatist either for selecting a corrupt period of history for illustration, or for faithfully representing it, yet he certainly loses not a little by such a selection. Whatever the pride of art may affirm, the abiding charm of a poem will ever bear a proportion to the moral beauty it enshrines, not merely the beauty which the poet has created, but that which he has found ready-made in | interests of the drama require, and as it his theme. A favourite book is generally seems to us, historic truth no less, that specione fortunate in its subject, as well as one mens of a nobler order of character should that makes the most of that subject. The be also introduced in a compensating measpoet works against the tide unless the theme ure. The best periods have their villains, and the characters he describes work with and the worst have often their saints and him, and tend to a result which, though heroes: nature commonly produces such in- * painful, still is such as the higher imagina- termingling, and art requires it. The chronition can muse on with satisfaction and cles of the time described, full as they are peace. There must be a due proportion of of violence and wrong, delight us also with sunshine to the shadow, and even the sad- many a trait of generosity, magnanimity, est events must be something more than loyalty, fidelity, and self-abnegation, which sad; they must illustrate poetical justice; need no aid from the romance of chivalry to they must set forth the ways of God to man; give them interest. Virtue becomes perthey must leave behind them the sense that fected by the very trials and temptations to the world we inhabit, though it has its sor- which it is subjected, and though at particurows, has yet its method and order, that lar periods injustice and wrong may occupy it is a region into which angels of chastise- an unusual prominence upon the surface of ment are indeed sent as well as angels of society, yet true virtue must co-exist with love and joy, but that it is not a jungle beset these, both in high places and in low, or soby wild beasts, or a labyrinth—the haunt ciety could not long continue to exist. It of mocking spirits. has but small place in this play. Even A perfect tragic theme is one that pre-characters so rarely presented to us that sents us with greatness in all forms. There their vices contribute nothing to the carrymust be great sorrows, but there should also ing out of the plot, are sketched in colours be great characters; there should be a scope of arbitrary gloom. The Archbishop of Pafor great energies: the event should be the ris is made a servile old pedant. This is result of great, even though of erring, pas-gratuitous. The metropolitan sees were in sions, not of petty infirmities and base machinations. Many a striking theme does not include such materials, abundant as it may be in stirring action and picturesque positions, just as many a fair landscape is deficient in that which a picture requires. Let the subject include the characteristics we have named and very numerous defects, with which the critic may cavil, will detract but little from the reader's pleasure. He will recur to the work when the first effect of surprise, and the admiration produced by the sense of difficulties overcome, have worn off. A poet will be wise to choose a theme that does much for him. It is the one for which he can do most, as, in the long-run, it is the best land which best repays the husbandman's toil. those ages commonly occupied either by "That liberty she grants herself, good soul, The subject of St. Clement's Eve combines the barbarism of prolonged civil war with the corruptions of a court, and exhibits a social condition in which simplicity has ceased to exist, while refinement has not is a comment made upon her by a friend; yet come. It supplies but one wholly noble and we find her stimulating the vanity and character, that of the hermit, Robert de increasing the danger of a pupil intrusted to Menuot. Montargis and Burgundy are men her charge, who has attracted the admirawithout conscience or honour, or even that tion of the Duke of Orleans. This might regard for reputation which often passes for surely have been avoided without representhonour. The two monks, or supposed monks, ing the abbess either as a saintly Hildegarde, are equally prompt at the burning of a witch or even as a nun "wise and witty," and or the composition of a philtre. Such cha- with more aptitude for the day's work than racters, in their due place, may doubtless be fitness for a place in romance. Of the portrayed both justly and usefully. But the younger female characters, Flos, though energetic and sparkling, is not intended to interest our deeper sympathies. We have spoken strongly of what we deem the fault of the theme in this play. It is more difficult to speak, without the appearance of exaggeration, of its merits. Its manliness might startle a literary age as effeminate as ours. Not a few of its readers will exclaim "What doth the eagle in the coop, The bison in the stall?" In its vigour, both of thought and of language, it possesses a merit which to some will be lost in its strangeness- -a strangeness like that which we find in the organic remains of a remote age. That vigour belongs, not only to the serious scenes, but to the lighter also, which are of a very different character from those of A Sicilian Summer, and preserve something of fierceness even in mirth. Its songs have the buoyancy, terseness, and dramatic impulse which belong to those of Mr. Taylor's earlier plays. In none of his works, perhaps, is his style so consummate. It is at once classical and idiomatic, and it has the polish, with the weight of steel. Above all it is invariably clear, letting the thoughts shine through it, like objects seen through transparent air. This last eharacteristic is becoming rare in our day, owing, in some measure, to the very degree to which some particular merits of style have been carried. At present, in not a little of our popular poetry, language has been so strained in search of expressiveness, and has thus become such a richly-coloured medium, that it sometimes seems to be a beautiful substitute for thought rather than a revealer of thought, thus resembling those water-colour drawings in which the aërial effects swallow up mountain and plain, and in which the picture might be described as mist with trees in it. In this play, condensation has, we think, been carried too far. The introduction of a few interstitial scenes would be useful, not only as thus allowing the enrichment of poetry and philosophic thought, but yet more in suspending the course of an action so rapid as to hurry us out of breath. That action is occupied chiefly by the jealousies of the royal cousins; and we have not room to trace it in details. They had also their occasional reconciliations, one of which is thus humorously described: "To-day they rode together on one horse, Each in the other's livery. To-morrow They are to sleep together in one bed. I bend the knee as one ordain'd of God, A storm arose and darkness was around A light was flash'd upon the raging sea, A woman's body; thereupon were perch'd And blood was on the claws of each, which clasp'd, This the right breast and that the left, and each Fought with the other, nor for that they ceased To tear the body. Then there came a cry Piercing the storm-Woe, woe for France, woe, woe! Thy mother France, how excellently fair And in how foul a clutch!' Then silence, then, 'Robert of Menuot, thou shalt surely live, |
