'I hear your call! It sustains him in his solitude, and mark how triumphantly it carries him through in the hour of action. Odo the archbishop, Ricola the king's chaplain, as well as king and courtiers, all give way before this inexorable, unreasoning fanaticism, a fanaticism which is as complete a stranger to fear as it is to rea son. "Dunstan (to Elgiva). Fly hence, It was And forthwith Elgiva, in spite of the king's resistance, is carried out a captive. The king, too, is imprisoned in the Tower, and here ensues a scene which brings out another aspect of the mind of Dunstan. the object of the crafty priest to induce Edwin to resign the crown: he had, therefore, made his imprisonment as painful as possible. He now visits him in the Tower, and in this interview we see, underneath the mad zealot and the subtle politician, something of the genuine man. Dunstan had not been always, and only, the priest; he understood the human life he trampled on : "Dunstan. What makes you weak? Do you not like your food? Or have you not enough? Edwin. Enough is brought; But he that brings it drops what seems to say That it is mixed with poison-some slow drug; So that I scarce dare eat, and hunger always. Dunstan. Your food is poisoned by your own suspicions. 'Tis your own fault. But thus it is with kings; suspicions haunt, And dangers press around them all their days; Ambition galls them, luxury corrupts, And wars and treasons are their talk at table. Edwin. This homily you should read to prosperous kings; It is not needed for a king like me. To thy credulous ears I will not. Unless thou by an instant act Renounce the crown, Elgiva shall not live. The deed is ready, to which thy name affixed Discharges from restraint both her and thee. Say, wilt thou sign? Edwin. Dunstan. Be advised. What hast thou to surrender? I look round; This chamber is thy palace, court, and realm. I do not see the crown-where is it hidden? Is that thy throne ?—why, 'tis a base joint-stool; Or this thy sceptre ?—'tis an ashen stick Notched with the days of thy captivity. Such royalties to abdicate, methinks, Should hardly hold thee long. Nay, I myself, That love not ladies greatly, would give these To ransom whom I loved.' Dunstan. Sot, liar, miscreant, No! God puts them into mine! and may my soul In tortures howl away eternity, If ever again it yield to that false fear We believe we have done justice to all the aspects in which the character of Dunstan is here represented to us, but it would require a much larger space than we have at command to do justice to the whole drama of Edwin the Fair. The canvas is crowded with figures, almost every one of which has been a careful study, and will repay the study of a critical reader; and if the passages of eloquent writing are not so numerous as in his previous work, there is no deficiency of them, and many are the pungent, if not witty sayings, that might be extracted. The chief fault which seems to us to pervade this drama, is indeed, that there is too much apparent study-that too much is seen of the artist. Speaking generally of Mr. Taylor, and regarding him as a dramatic poet, wę could desire more life and passion, more abandonment of himself to the characters he is portraying. But we feel this more particularly in Edwin the Fair. We seem to see the artist sorting and putting together again the elements of human nature. Wulfstan, the ever absent sage, his tricksy Emma, and her very silly lover, Ernway, are dramatic creations which may probably be defended point by point; but, for all that, they do not look like real men and women. As to his monks, the satellites of Dunstan, it may be said that they could not have been correctly drawn if they had borne the appearance of being real men. We do not like them notwithstanding. His In the edition which lies before us, bound up with Edwin the Fair is the republication of an early drama, Isaac Comnenus. It excited, we are told in the preface, little attention in its first appearance. We ourselves never saw it till very lately. Though inferior to his subsequent productions, it is not without considerable merit, but it will probably gather its chief interest as the forerunner of Philip Van Artevelde, and from the place it will occupy in the history of the author's mind. allowed to pass unnoticed by the public, A first performance, which was might be expected to be altogether different in kind from its fortunate successors. The author, in his advance out of obscurity into the full light of success, might be supposed | with it; bravely, but coldly-with a sneer to have thrown aside his first habits of ever on his lip. With the church, too, he thought and expression. It is not so here. has contrived to make himself extremely We have much the same style, and there is unpopular, and the Patriarch is still more the same combination of shrewd observation rancorously opposed to him than the with a philosophic melancholy, the same Emperor. gravity and the same sarcasm. It is curious to notice how plainly there is the germ of Philip Van Artevelde in Isaac Comnenus. The hero of Ghent is far more sagacious, more serious, and more tender; but he looks on life with a lingering irony, and a calm cynicism to him it is a sad and disenchanted vision. In Isaac Comnenus the same elements are combined in a somewhat different proportion there is more of the irony and a more bitter cynicism; less of the grave tenderness and the practical sagacity. Artevelde is Isaac Comnenus living over life again the same man, but with the advantage of a life's experience. Indeed, Artevelde, if we may venture to jest with so grave a personage, has something of the air of one who had been in the world before, who was not walking along its paths for the first time; he treads with so sure a footstep, and seems to have no questions to ask, and nothing to learn of experience. Before we become acquainted with him, he has loved and lost by death his gentle Irene. This renders the game of ambition still more contemptible in his eyes. It renders him cold also to the love of a certain fair cousin, Anna Comnena. Love, or ambition, approaches him also in the person of Theodora, the daughter of the emperor. She is willing to desert her father's cause, and ally herself and all her hopes to Isaac Comnenus. Comnenus declines her love. The rejected Theodora brings about the catastrophe of the piece. The Emperor Nicephorus is deposed; Isaac is conqueror in the strife, but he gives over the crown he has won to his brother Alexius. Then does Theodora present herself disguised as some humble petitioner to Isaac Comnenus. Armed with a dagger, she forces her way into an inner chamber where he is; a groan is heard, and the following stage direction closes the play: "All rush into the inner chamber, whilst Theodora, passing out from it, crosses the stage, holding in her hand a The curtain dagger covered with blood. falls." This scanty outline will be sufficient to make the following characteristic quotations intelligible to those who may not have read the play. Eudocia, his sister, thus describes Comnenus : "He Happily it has not been necessary hitherto Is nothing new to dangers nor to life- He lived These monks, to wit: they count the time, not spend it; clocks; They reckon moments by the tick of beads, Comnenus, we have said, is on ill terms with the church. Speaking of the sanctuary he says:— Hath no such holy precinct that my blood On quitting his cousin Anna, she says: "Go, and good angels guard thee, is my prayer. Comnenus.-Good soldiers, Anna. In the arm of flesh Are we to trust. The Mother of the Gods, "Just as you came I moralized the matter of that change And his moralizing is overcast with the shadow of doubt. The addresses, for such they are, of Theodora, the daughter of the emperor, he receives and declines with the greatest calmness, though they are of that order which it is manifestly as dangerous to reject as to accept. "Germanus. My noble lord, the Cæsarissa waits With infinite impatience to behold you: Tell her I'm coming, sir, with speed.” With speed, however, he does not go, nor makes a better excuse for his delay than that he was "sleeping out the noontide." In the first interview he escapes from her confidence, and when subsequently she will not be misunderstood, he says: "Nor now, nor ever, Will I make bargains for a lady's love." In a dialogue with his brother Alexius, his temper and way of thinking, and the circumstance which has mainly produced them, are more fully developed. We make a few extracts without attempting very closely to connect them. Alexius has been remarking the change in Comnenus since they last met. "Comnenus. Change is youth's wonder: Such transmutations have I seen on man That fortune seemed a slow and steadfast power Compared with nature. Alexius. There is nought thou'st seen I speak not of thy change in outward favor, Comnenus. Ay, hearts change too; Mine has grown sprightly, has it not, and hard? I ride it now with spurs; else, else, AlexiusWell is it said the best of life is childhood. Life is a banquet where the best's first served, And when the guest is cloyed comes oil and garlic. Alexius. Hast thou forgotten how it was thy I look on that as on a lovely thing, Comnenus has wandered with his brother unawares to a spot which of all others on earth was the most dear or the most painful to him-the spot where his Irene had been buried. He recognizes it whilst he is in the full tide of his cynicism : "Alexius. What is this carved upon the rock? Comnenus. I know not: But Time has ta'en it for a lover's scrawl; He's razed it, razed it. Alexius. I take it for a lover's. Comnenus. No, not quite; look here. What! there's some talk Of balmy breath, and hearts pierced through and through With eyes' miraculous brightness-vows ne'er broken, Until the church had sealed them--charms loved madly, Until it be a sin to love them not- There are but two words. No, none of it. brother, contrives to dismiss him, and remains alone upon the spot. "This is the very earth that covers her, Ran off in sport trailing the shovels with them, Against a neighboring tombstone to shake off How that which was the life's life of our being Whilst reading this play of Isaac Comnenus we seemed to perceive a certain Byronian vein, which came upon us rather unexpectedlv. Not that there is any very close resemblance between Comnenus and the heroes of Lord Byron; but there is a desperate wilfulness, a tone of skepticism, and a caustic view of human life, which occasionally recall them to mind. We turned to the preface to Philip Van Artevelde, where there is a criticism upon the poetry of Byron, not unjust in the faults it detects, but cold and severe, as it seems to us, in the praise that it awards; and we found there an intimation which confirmed our suspicion that Isaac Comnenus had been written whilst still partially under the influence of that poetry-written in what we may describe as a transition state. says there of Lord Byron's poetry, “It will always produce a powerful impression upon very young readers, and I scarcely think that it can have been more admired by any than myself, when I was included in that category." And have we not here some explanation of the severity and coldness of that criticism itself? Did not the maturer intellect a little resent in that critical judgment the hallucinations of the youth? He Perhaps we are hardly corrrect in calling the temper and spirit we have here alluded to Byronian: they are common to all ages and to many minds, though signally developed by that poet, and in our own epoch. Probably the future historian of this period of our literature will attribute much of this peculiar exhibition of bitterness and despondency to the sanguine hopes first excited and then disappointed by the French Revolution. He will probably say of certain regions of our literature, that the whole bears manifest traces of volcanic origin. Pointing to some noble eminence, which seems to have been eternally calm, he will conjecture that it owed its elevation to the same force which raised the neighboring Etna. Applying the not very happy language of geology, he may describe it as a crater of elevation;" which, being interpreted, means no crater at all, but an elevation produced by the like volcanic agency; the crater itself is higher up in the same mountain range. There still remains one other small volume of Mr. Taylor's poetry, which we must not pass over entirely without mentioning-The Eve of the Conquest, and other Poems. The chief piece here is of the nature of a dramatic scene. Harold, the night before the battle of Hastings, converses with his daughter, unfolds some passages of his past life, and vindicates himself in his quarrel with that William the Norman who, on the morrow, was to add the title of Conqueror to his name. But as it will be more agreeable to vary the nature of our quotations, we shall make the few extracts we have space for from the lyric poems which follow. The "Lago Varese" will be, we suspect, the favorite with most readers. The image of the Italian girl is almost as distinctly reflected in the verse as it would have been in her own native lake. "And sauntering up a circling cove, I stood to see-the girl looked round-her face "She rested with the air of rest So seldom seen, of those Not languor, to repose. Her form was poised, yet buoyant, firm, though free, And liberal of her bright black eyes was she. "The sunshine of the Southern face, |