392 ALFIERI - HIS TRAGEDIES GRAVE AND SOLID,

tation, and to exclude all showpieces of fine writing in a dialogue of deep interest or impetuous passion, has betrayed him, on some occasions, into too sententious and strained a diction, and given an air of labour and heaviness to many parts of his composition. He has felt, perhaps a little too constantly, that the cardinal virtue of a dramatic writer is to keep his personages to the business and the concerns that lie before them; and by no means to let them turn to moral philosophers, or rhetorical describers of their own emotions. But, in his zealous adherence to this good maxim, he seems sometimes to have forgotten, that certain passions are declamatory in nature as well as on the stage; and that, at any rate, they do not all vent themselves in concise and pithy sayings, but run occasionally into hyperbole and amplification. As it is the great excellence, so it is occasionally the chief fault of Alfieri's dialogue, that every word is honestly employed to help forward the action of the play, by serious argument, necessary narrative, or the direct expression of natural emotion. There are no excursions or digressions,-no episodical conversations, -and none but the most brief moralizings. This gives a certain air of solidity to the whole structure of the piece, that is apt to prove oppressive to an ordinary reader, and reduces the entire drama to too great uniformity.

We make these remarks chiefly with a reference to French tragedy. For our own part, we believe that those who are duly sensible of the merit of Shakespeare, will never be much struck with any other dramatical compositions. There are no other plays, indeed, that paint human nature,-that strike off the characters of men with all the freshness and sharpness of the original, -and speak the language of all the passions, not like a mimic, but an echo-neither softer nor louder, nor differently modulated from the spontaneous utterance of the art. In these respects he disdains all comparison with Alfieri, or with any other mortal: nor is it fair, perhaps, to suggest a comparison, where no rivalry can be imagined. Alfieri, like all the continental dramatists,

BUT POWERFUL AND LOFTY.

393

considers a tragedy as a poem. In England, we look upon it rather as a representation of character and passion. With them, of course, the style and diction, and the congruity and proportions of the piece, are the main objects; -with us, the truth and the force of the imitation. It is sufficient for them, if there be character and action enough to prevent the composition from languishing, and to give spirit and propriety to the polished dialogue of which it consists;- we are satisfied, if there be management enough in the story not to shock credibility entirely, and beauty and polish enough in the diction to exclude disgust or derision. In his own way, Alfieri, we think, is excellent. His fables are all admirably contrived and completely developed; his dialogue is copious and progressive; and his characters all deliver natural sentiments with great beauty, and often with great force of expression. In our eyes, however, it is a fault that the fable is too simple, and the incidents too scanty; and that all the characters express themselves with equal felicity, and urge their opposite views and pretensions with equal skill and plausibility. We see at once, that an ingenious author has versified the sum of a dialogue; and never, for a moment, imagine that we hear the real persons contending. There may be more eloquence and dignity in this style of dramatising;there is infinitely more deception in ours.

With regard to the diction of these pieces, it is not for tramontane critics to presume to offer any opinion. They are considered, in Italy, we believe, as the purest specimens of the favella Toscana that late ages have produced. To us they certainly seem to want something of that flow and sweetness to which we have been accustomed in Italian poetry, and to be formed rather upon the model of Dante than of Petrarca. At all events, it is obvious that the style is highly elaborate and artificial; and that the author is constantly striving to give it a sort of factitious force and energy, by the use of condensed and emphatic expressions, interrogatories, antitheses, and short and inverted sentences. In all these respects, as well as in the chastised gravity of the senti

394 CONTRAST BETWEEN HIS PLAYS AND CHARACTER.

ments, and the temperance and propriety of all the delineations of passion, these pieces are exactly the reverse of what we should have expected from the fiery, fickle, and impatient character of the author. From all that Alfieri has told us of himself, we should have expected to find in his plays great vehemence and irregular eloquence-sublime and extravagant sentiments-passions rising to frenzy-and poetry swelling into bombast. Instead of this we have a subdued and concise representation of energetic discourses-passions, not loud but deep-and a style so severely correct and scrupulously pure, as to indicate, even to unskilful eyes, the great labour which must have been bestowed on its purification. No characters can be more different than that which we should infer from reading the tragedies of Alfieri, and that which he has assigned to himself in these authentic memoirs.

The Life and Posthumous Writings of WILLIAM COWPER, Esq. With an Introductory Letter to the Right Honourable Earl Cowper. By WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. Chichester: 1803.

THIS book is too long; but it is composed on a plan that makes prolixity unavoidable. Instead of an account of the poet's life, and a view of his character and performances, the biographer has laid before the public a large selection from his private correspondence, and merely inserted as much narrative between each series of letters, as was necessary to preserve their connection, and make the subject of them intelligible.

This scheme of biography, which was first introduced, we believe, by Mason, in his life of Gray, has many evident advantages in point of liveliness of colouring, and fidelity of representation. It is something intermediate between the egotism of confessions, and the questionable narrative of a surviving friend, who must be partial, and may be mistaken: It enables the reader to judge for himself, from materials that were not provided for the purpose of determining his judgment; and holds up to him, instead of a flattering or unfaithful portrait, the living lineaments and features of the person it intends to commemorate. It is a plan, however, that requires so much room for its execution, and consequently so much money and so much leisure in those who wish to be masters of it, that it ought to be reserved, we conceive, for those great and eminent characters that are likely to excite an interest among all orders and generations of mankind. While the biography of Shakeand Bacon shrinks into the corner of an octavo, speare we can scarcely help wondering that the history of the sequestered life and solitary studies of Cowper should have extended into two quarto volumes.

396

COWPER- HIS EARLY LIFE.

The little Mr. Hayley writes in these volumes is by no means well written; though certainly distinguished by a very amiable gentleness of temper, and the strongest appearance of sincere veneration and affection for the departed friend to whose memory it is consecrated. It will be very hard, too, if they do not become popular; as Mr. Hayley seems to have exerted himself to conciliate readers of every description, not only by the most lavish and indiscriminate praise of every individual he has occasion to mention, but by a general spirit of approbation and indulgence towards every practice and opinion which he has found it necessary to speak of. Among the other symptoms of book making which this publication contains, we can scarcely forbear reckoning the expressions of this too obsequious and unoffending philanthropy.

The constitutional shyness and diffidence of Cowper appeared in his earliest childhood, and was not subdued in any degree by the bustle and contention of a Westminster education; where, though he acquired a considerable portion of classical learning, he has himself declared, that "he was never able to raise his eye above the shoe-buckles of the elder boys, who tyrannized over him." From this seminary, he seems to have passed, without any academical preparation, into the Society of the Inner Temple, where he continued to reside to the age of thirty-three. Neither his biographer nor his letters give any satisfactory account of the way in which this large and most important part of his life was spent. Although Lord Thurlow was one of his most intimate associates, it is certain that he never made any proficiency in the study of the law; and the few slight pieces of composition, in which he appears to have been engaged in this interval, are but a scanty produce for fifteen years of literary leisure. That a part of those years was very idly spent, indeed, appears from his own account of them. In a letter to his cousin, in 1786, he says,

"I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years in his house; but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton Row, as you very well remember.