Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846

We have said, that while we appreciate the motives, and respect the principles, which prevent so large a portion of the middle class of society from frequenting the theatre, we lament their determination, and regard it as an evil even greater to the morality than it is to the genius of the nation. In truth, it is founded on a mistaken view of the principles which influence human nature; and it would be well if moralists, and the friends of mankind, would reconsider the subject, before, in this country at least, it is too late. The love of the drama is founded on the deepest, the most universal, the noblest principles of our nature. It exists, and ever will exist. For good or for evil, its influence is immovable. We cannot extirpate, or even tangibly abridge its sway; the art of Æschylus and Shakspeare, of Sophocles and Racine, of Euripides and Schiller, is not to be extinguished by the reputable but contracted ideas of a limited portion of society. God has not made it sweeter to weep with those who weep, than to rejoice with those who rejoice, for no purpose. Look at the Arabs, as they cluster round the story-teller who charms the groups of Yemen, or the knots of delighted faces which surround the Polchinello of Naples, and you will see how universal is the passions in mankind for theatrical representations. But though we cannot eradicate the desire for this gratification, we may degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation of the human soul.

It is for this reason that we lament, as a serious social and national evil, the long interregnum in dramatic excellence in our writers, and the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors. As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked out in the meretricious garb of fancy, or aided by the transient attractions of beauty. Who can tell how much the heart-stirring appeals of Shakspeare have done to string to lofty purposes the British heart; how powerfully the dignified sentiments of Corneille have contributed to sustain the heroic portions of the French character? "C'est l'imagination," said Napoleon, "qui domine le monde." The drama has one immense advantage over the pulpit or the professor's chair: it fascinates while it instructs – it allures while it elevates. It thus extends its influence over a wide and important circle, upon whom didactic precepts will never have any influence. Without doubt, the strong and deep foundations of public morality must be laid in religious and moral instruction; if they are wanting, the social edifice, how fair soever to appearance, is built on a bed of sand. But fully admitting this – devoutly looking to our national Establishment for the formation of public principle – to our schools and colleges for the training of the national intellect – the experienced observer, aware of the sway of active principles over the human soul, will not neglect the subordinate but still powerful aid to be derived, in the great work of elevating and ennobling society, from the emotions which may be awakened at the theatre – the enthusiasm so often excited by tragic excellence. The thing to be dreaded with the great bulk of the spectators – that is, by far the largest portion of mankind – is not their avowed infidelity and their open wickedness; it is the sway of the degrading or selfish passions which is chiefly dangerous. The thing to be feared is, not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. How important, then, that genius should be called in here to the aid of virtue, and the fascinations of the highest species of excellence employed to elevate, where so many causes exist to degrade the soul!

"Cosi all egro fanciul' porgiamo aspersi,
Di soave licor gli orli del Vaso;
Succhi amari, ingannato intanto ei beve,
Et dall' inganno suo vita riceve."

The elevating influence of the noble sentiments with which the higher dramatic works abound, is more loudly called for in this than it has been in any former period of British history. We are no longer in the age of enthusiasm. The days of chivalry have gone by – and gone by, it is feared, never to return. We are in the age of commerce and the mechanical arts. Material appliances, creature comforts, – stimulants to the senses – now form the great moving power of society. Gain is every where sought after with the utmost avidity; but it is sought not for any lofty object, but on account of the substantial physical comforts with which the possession of riches is attended. Sensuality, disguised under the veil of elegance, refinement, and accomplishment, is making rapid strides amongst us. It does so in all old, wealthy, and long-established communities; it is the well-known and oft-described premonitory symptom of national decline. We can scarce venture to hope, we should find in the British empire at this period the enthusiasm which manned the ramparts of Sarragossa, the patriotism which fired the torches of Moscow. We should find united, too generally it is to be feared, at least in a considerable portion, the timidity and selfishness which signed the capitulation of Venice. How important, then, to gain possession of so mighty a lever for moving the general mind, and counteracting the selfishness which is degrading society, as the enthusiasm of the theatre affords; and instead of permitting it to fall into the hands of vice, to become the handmaid of licentiousness, to turn its vast powers to the rousing of elevated sentiments, the strengthening of virtuous resolutions, the nourishing of generous emotions! Whoever succeeds in this, whether author, actor, or actress, is a friend to the best interests of humanity, and is to be ranked with the benefactors of the human race.

Nor be it said that the theatre has been now irrevocably turned, in this country, to frivolous or contemptible representations, or that dancing and singing have for ever banished the tragic muse from the stage. Facts – well known and universally acknowledged facts, prove the reverse. How strong soever the desire for excitement or physical enjoyment may be, the passion for heart-stirring incident, the besoin of strong emotions, the thirst for tragic event, is still stronger. Look at the Parisian stage – what a concatenation of murders, suicides, conflagrations, massacres, and horrors of every description, have there grown up with the spread of the romantic drama in the lesser theatres! That shows how strong is the passion for tragic excitement in highly civilized and long corrupt society. Enter any of our courts of law, when any trial for murder or any other serious crime is going forward – observe how unwearied is the attention of all classes, and especially the lowest; with what patience they will sit for days and nights together, to watch the proceedings; mark the deathlike silence which pervades the hall, when any important part of the evidence is delivered, or the verdict of the jury is returned. Observe the mighty throng which attends a public execution. The writer once was present, when an hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled in one spot to witness the expiation of their guilt by two murderers on the scaffold.[13 - At the execution of Doolan and another, for a combination murder near Glasgow, on May 13th, 1842.] When the mournful procession set out for the place of punishment, four miles distant, not a sound was to be heard from the innumerable spectators who lined the streets; the clang of the horses' hoofs on the pavement was audible among two hundred thousand persons. When it returned with the dead bodies, the clang of voices, the pent-up emotion, burst forth in so mighty a shout, that the discharge of artillery would hardly have been heard in the throng. The anxiety, sometimes amounting almost to frenzy, to get a sight of the convicted murderer, to be present at the condemned sermon, to see his last agonies on the scaffold, to examine the scenes of his crime, even to obtain a lock of his hair or a piece of his garments, is another proof of the disordered and often extravagant desires which the longing for strong and tragic excitement will produce in a large portion of society. Rely upon it, deep emotion, if rightly managed and properly directed, is more attractive than either amusement or licentiousness. Suffering exacts a far deeper sympathy than joy; the generous, for the time at least, overpower the selfish feelings. Let but the tragic muse be restored to her appropriate position on the stage, and supported by the requisite ability in the author and performers, and she will extinguish rivalry, and bear down opposition.

We have said that the tragic muse will do this, "if supported by the requisite ability in the authors and performers." We have said this advisedly; for we belong to the former class, and we have no complaint to make of want of ability on the stage. On the contrary, talent and genius, of the most elevated kind, are to be found upon it. The fault lies with our own profession, or rather with that portion of it who cultivate dramatic composition. The origin of the evil is to be found, the remote cause of the present degraded condition of the stage, is to be found in – strike but hear – in Shakspeare!

The most devoted worshipper of the genius of the Bard of Avon, the most enthusiastic admirer of the profound knowledge of the human heart, and unequalled force of expression which he possessed, cannot exceed ourselves in the deep admiration which we entertain for his transcendent excellences. On the contrary, it is those very excellences which have done the mischief; it is they which have misled subsequent dramatic writers in this country, and occasioned the constant failures by which his imitators have been distinguished. It is not surprising that it is so. Shakspeare was supremely great; but he was so, not in consequence of his dramatic principles, but in spite of them. He fired his arrow further than mortal man has yet done; but he fired it not altogether in the right direction, and no one since has been able to draw the bow of Ulysses.

There is no one who has not heard of the famous dramatic unities, and the long-continued controversy which has been maintained between the admirers of the Greek drama, founded on their strict observance, and the followers of Shakspeare, who set them at defiance. In this, as in other disputes, probably neither party will ever convince the other; and the only effect of the contention is to fix each more immovably in its own opinion. But, waiving at present the abstract question, which of the two systems is in itself preferable, or essential to dramatic success, there is a practical consideration of deep interest to society, with which we are all concerned and the result of which throws no small light on the theoretical principle. It is this. Placing the creators of the two systems – Æschylus and Shakspeare – on a par; conceding to the author of Hamlet an equal place with that of the composer of the Prometheus Vinctus; which of the two systems has had most success in the world; has longest preserved its sway over the human mind; has best withstood the causes of corruption inherent in all earthly change?

What a noble set of followers have, in all ages, graced the banners of the Athenian bard! Sophocles, Aristophanes, Menander, and Euripides, in Greece; Terence and Plautus in Rome; Metastasio, Goldoni, and Alfieri in Italy; Corneille, Racine, Molière, and Voltaire in France; Schiller,[14 - Schiller's dramas are of the modern kind, and the unities are not strictly observed; but his finer pieces belong more nearly to the Grecian than the Romantic school.] in himself a host, in Germany – contribute the brightest stars in the immortal band. Their merits may be unequal, their talent various, their pieces sometimes uninteresting; but, taken as a whole, their works exhibit the greatest efforts of human genius. What has the Romantic school to exhibit, after its inimitable founder, as a set-off to this long line of greatness? The ephemeral and now forgotten lights of the British stage – the blasting indecencies of Beaumont and Fletcher; the vigorous ribaldry of Dryden; the shocking extravagances of the recent French and Spanish stage; the Tour de Nesle, and other elevating pieces, which adorn the modern Parisian theatre, and train to virtuous and generous feeling the present youth of France. Shakspeare himself, with all his transcendent excellences, is unable to keep his ground on the British stage. Like all great men, whom accident or error has embarked in a wrong course, he has been passed by a host of followers, who, unable to imitate his beauties, have copied only his defects, till they have fairly banished the legitimate tragic drama from the London stage. If the precept of Scripture be true – "By their fruits shall ye know them" – the palm must be unquestionably awarded to the old Grecian school.

If the different principles on which the two great schools of the drama proceed are considered, it will not appear surprising that this result has taken place.

The Greek drama embraced a very limited number of stories and events, and they were all thoroughly known to every audience in the country. The incidents and tragic occurrences so wonderfully illustrated by the genius of their tragic poets, are almost all to be found sketched out in the Odyssey of Homer, or in the successive disasters of the fated race of Œdipus. The sacrifice of Iphigenia to procure fair gales when setting out for Troy, the foundation of the exquisite tragedy by Euripides of Iphigenia in Aulis; the subsequent meeting of her with her brothers, the basis of Iphigenia in Tauris, by the same poet; the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and her adulterous lover; the revenge of Electra and Orestes, who put their mother and her lover to death; the subsequent remorse and woful fate of the avenging brother and sister – form so many tragedies, which for centuries entranced the Athenian audience. The sorrows of Andromache, when torn from her home after the death of Hector and sack of Troy, and subjected to the jealousy of the daughter of Menelaus; the deep woes of Hecuba, who saw in one day her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the corpse of her son washed ashore, after having been perfidiously murdered by his Thracian host, as they appeared in the thrilling verses of Euripides – were all previously well known to the Grecian audience. If to these we add the multiplied disasters of the line of Œdipus; the despair of that unhappy man at his incestuous marriage with Jocasta; his subsequent sorrow when an exile, poor and bowed down by misfortune; the dreadful fate which befell his sons when they fell by each others' hands before the walls of Thebes; and the heroic self-sacrifice of Antigone to procure the rites of sepulture for her beloved and innocent brother – we shall find we have embraced nearly the whole dramas which exercised the genius of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

It resulted from this limited number of incidents in the Greek drama, and the thorough acquaintance of the audience, in every instance, with the characters, the incidents, and the dénouement of the piece, that the grand object of the poet was to work up a particular part of the story to the highest perfection, rather than, to an audience unacquainted with any part of it, to unfold the whole. It was that which created the difference between it and the Romantic drama of modern times. There was no use in attempting to tell the story, for that was already known to all the audience. It would have been like telling the story of Wallace, or Queen Mary, or Robert Bruce, to a Scottish assembly. Genius was to be displayed; effect was to be produced, not by unfolding new and unknown incidents, but working up to the highest degree those already known. Hence the peculiar character of the Greek drama; hence the astonishing and unequalled perfection to which it was brought. The world has never seen, perhaps it will never again see, any thing so exquisite as the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides – any thing so sublime as some of Æschylus. All subsequent ages have concurred in this opinion. All nations have united in it. The moderns and the ancients, differing in so many other points, are at one in this particular. There is as little diversity of opinion on the subject, as in the admiration of the sculpture of Phidias, the verses of Virgil, or the paintings of Raphael.

It was by the strict observance of the unities, and the necessity to which it exposed the poet of supplying, by his own genius and taste, all adventitious aids derived from change of scene, splendour of decoration, and novelty of story, that this astonishing perfection was attained. Force of language, grandeur of thought, pathos of feeling, were all in all. The dramatist was compelled to rest on these, and these alone. If he did not succeed in them, he was lost. The audience, composed of the most refined and enlightened citizens that then existed in the world, went to the theatre, expecting not to be interested or surprised by the unravelling of a new and intricate story, but to be fascinated by the force of expression and pathos of feeling, with which a mournful catastrophe already known was told. To attain this object, the dramatic writers of antiquity selected that period in an interesting and tragic story, when its incidents were approaching their crisis, when the dénouement for good or for evil took place; and they represented that at full length, and in all its detail to the spectators. The previous incidents which had brought matters up to this point, were narrated in the course of the dialogue in the earlier scenes; the closing catastrophe, often too terrible to be represented on the stage, was described by some of the characters who had witnessed it. But the intervening period, the events and thoughts which succeeded the past, and preceded the future, were painted in their fullest detail, and with all the force and finishing of which the artist was capable. Nothing resembles the structure of a tragedy of antiquity so much as a modern trial for murder; and in the undying interest which such a proceeding invariably excites in all countries and all ages, we may see the deep foundation laid in human nature for the influence of that species of dramatic composition. As in the Greek drama, the witnesses tell the preceding story, and explain the previous crimes or events by which matters have been brought to the present stage, when life or death depends upon the issue of the proceedings. The trial itself takes up these proceedings at the decisive point, and, with strict regard to unity of time and place, exhibits their aims and issue to the mind of the spectators. If the execution of the criminal were immediately to follow the verdict of the jury, and some persons were, when the spectators were still sitting in the hall thrilling with the interest they had felt, to come in, and relate the demeanour and last words of the unhappy being on the scaffold, that would be a Greek drama complete.

As the field of dramatic representation was thus limited on the stage of antiquity, the whole genius and powers of the poet were bent to concentrating on that narrow space all the powers and beauties of which his art was susceptible. Nothing was omitted which could either elevate, interest, entrance, or melt the heart of the audience. It is a common opinion in modern times with persons not acquainted in the originals with the Greek tragedy, that it was couched in a stately measured tone, wholly different from nature, and more akin to the pompous and sonorous verses of the French theatre. There never was a greater mistake. If it is characterized by any peculiarity more than another, it is the brevity and condensation of the language, the energy of the expressions, and the force with which the most vehement passions, and strongest emotions of the heart are conveyed in the simplest words. So brief is the expression, so frequent the breaks and interjections, that the rhythm and verse are frequently, and for a long period, forgotten. Euripides alone, who had great rhetorical powers, sometimes indulges in the lengthened disquisitions, the arguments in verse, which exhibit so admirable a view of all that can be urged on a particular subject, and which have been so frequently imitated by Corneille and Racine. But even he, when he comes to the impassioned or pathetic scenes, as in the Medea, the Iphigenia in Aulis, and Hecuba, is as brief and energetic in his expression as Shakspeare himself. Simplicity of language, energy of thought, and force of passion, are the grand characteristics of the Greek drama, as they were of the Greek oratory, and their combination constituted the excellence of both. The fire of the poet, the reach of imagination, was reserved for the chorus, which frequently exhibited the most sublime specimens of lyric poetry, rivalling the loftiest strains of the Pindaric muse. Thus the audience, in a short piece, in which the plot was rapidly urged forward, and the interest was never allowed for a moment to flag, were presented alternately with the force of Demosthenes' declamation, the pathos of Sophocles' expressions, and the fire of Pindar's poetry. It was as if the finest scenes of Shakspeare's tragedies were thrown together with no other interjections but the eloquence of Burke in the dialogue, and lyric poetry on a level with Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," Gray's "Bard," or Campbell's "Last Man," in the chorus. Is it surprising that tragedies, exhibiting such a combination, worked out by the most perfect masters of the human heart, should have entranced every subsequent age?

Though one scene only was presented in each tragedy on the Greek stage, so that unity of place was effectually observed, yet unity of time was by no means so strictly attended to; so that the poet was far from being so fettered in this respect as is commonly imagined. Every scholar knows that a very considerable time, sometimes some hours, or half a day, were supposed to be consumed in the few minutes that the strophe and antistrophe of the chorus were in course of being chanted. For instance, in the Antigone of Sophocles, during the time that one of the chorus is reciting a few verses, the heroic sister has found out the body of her beloved brother, and, in violation of the command of Creon, bestowed on it the rites of sepulture. In the Hecuba of Euripides, in the brief space occupied by a chorus, her daughter Polyxine is led to the tomb of Achilles by Ulysses, and sacrificed there, in presence of the whole Greek army, to procure favourable gales for the return of the troops from Troy. In the Electra of the same author, during the strophes of one chorus, Orestes and Electra effect the death of the husband of Clytemnestra; during another, murder their unhappy mother herself. In the Phœnissæ of Euripides, the duel between the two sons of Jocasta, their mutual slaughter, and the self-immolation of that fated mother on the body of her beloved son Polynices, take place while the chorus were reciting a few verses, and are described when the actors return on the stage. In truth, it is often in the tragic events which thus take place behind the scenes during the chorus, but in close connexion with what had just before been exhibited on the boards, that a material part of the interest of the piece consists, and the art of the poet is shown. The interest is never allowed for a moment to flag; it is wrought up first by the anticipation of the catastrophe, then by its description; and the intervening period, when it was actually going forward, is filled up by the recital of sublime lyric poetry, at once causing the stop of time to be forgotten, affording a brief respite to the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and elevated state of mind in the audience.

It is impossible to conceive a more perfect drama than the Antigone of Sophocles. The subject, the characters, the moral tone of the piece, are as perfect as its execution is masterly and felicitous. It possesses, what is not frequent in Greek tragedy, the interest arising from elevated moral feeling and heroic courage devoted to noble purposes. The steady perseverance of Antigone in her noble resolution to perform the last rites to her dead brother, in defiance of the cruel threats of Creon; the courage with which she does discharge those mournful duties; the rage of the tyrant at the violation of his commands; the momentary reappearance of the woman in Antigone, when she thinks of her betrothed, and contemplates her dreadful fate, to be shut up in a living tomb in the rock; the despair of Hæmon, who kills himself on the body of his beloved; the silent despair of his mother, which, unable to find words for its expression, leads to her self-immolation – the last victim of the curses bestowed on the race of Œdipus; are all portrayed with inimitable force and pathos. Simplicity of expression, depth of feeling, resolution of mind, are its great characteristics, as they are of all the works of Sophocles. It has been revived with signal success in recent times. If a translation could be made, which should render into English the force and beauty of the original language, the mingled energy and delicacy of Sophocles's conception, we should, indeed, have a perfect idea of the magic of the Greek drama. Such a translation is not beyond the bounds of possibility; the English language is capable of it, and could, in the hands of a master, render back a faithful image of the brevity and power of the Greek. But that master must be a Sophocles, or a Shakspeare; and ages will probably elapse before the world produce either the one or the other.

The Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus is not properly a drama; at least, it has so little of the peculiar interest belonging to that species of poetry, that it can hardly be called such. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the most sublime composition that ever came from the thoughts of uninspired man. It is meant to portray the heroic devotion, the undaunted courage of Prometheus – the friend of man, the assuager of his sufferings, the aider of his enterprises – who was chained to a rock, exposed to the burning heats of summer, the shivering frosts of winter, by Jupiter, for having stolen fire – the parent of art, the spring of enterprise, the source of improvement – from heaven, to give it to the human race. From the expressions he uses on the ultimate results of that inestimable gift, one would almost suppose he had a prophetic anticipation of the marvels of Steam. The opening scene, where Prometheus is chained to a rock in Scythia, by Vulcan, in presence of "Force and Strength," the agents of Jupiter's commands; and the closing one, where he remains firm and unshaken amidst the wrath of the elements, the upheaving of the ocean, and the lightnings of heaven hurled at his devoted head, are of unrivalled sublimity. They literally realize the idea of the poet —

"Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

The Prometheus Vinctus is the Inferno of Dante dramatised; but it is fraught with a nobler moral. It does not portray the sufferings of sin for past guilt; it exhibits the heroism of virtue under present injustice. It paints the triumph of devoted benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the Paradise Regained, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in Paradise Lost. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from external injustice.

The Iphigenia in Aulis is the most perfect of all the tragedies of Euripides, and the best adapted for modern representation. The well-known story of the daughter of the King of Men being devoted to sacrifice, to appease the angry deities, and procure favourable gales for the fleet on the way to Troy, and of the agony of her parents under the infliction, is developed with all the pathos and eloquence of which that great master of the tragic art was capable. Nothing can exceed the progressive interest which the character of Iphigenia excites. At first, horrorstruck, and shrinking with the timidity of her sex from the axe of the priest, she gradually rises when her fate appears inevitable, and at length devotes herself for her country with a woman's devotion, and more than a man's fortitude. In the French plays on the same subject, a love episode is introduced between her and Achilles; but the simplicity of the Greek original appears preferable, in which she had no previous acquaintance with the son of Peleus, and he is interested in her fate, and strives to avert it, only from finding that his name, as her betrothed, had, without his knowledge, been used by Agamemnon to induce Clytemnestra to bring her to the Grecian camp. Doubtless, the tenderness of Racine in the love-scenes between her and Achilles, is inimitable; but the simplicity of the Greek original, where grief on her parents' part for her loss, and her own heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of patriotic duty, are undisturbed by any other emotion, is yet more touching, and far more agreeable to ancient manners, where love on the woman's part, previous to marriage, was, as now in the East, almost unknown.

In these great masterpieces of ancient art, the unity of emotions is strictly preserved; and it is that, joined to the lofty moral tone preserved through the drama, which constitutes their unequalled charm. This, however, is not always the case in the Greek tragedies. They are not insensible to the effect of a high moral tone, or the development of poetical justice; but they did not regard either as the principal object, or even a material part, of dramatic composition. To delineate the play of the passions was their great object: Aristotle says expressly that was the end of tragedy. To that object they devoted all their powers; they succeeded in laying bare the human heart in its most agonized moments, and in its inmost recesses, with terrible fidelity. In this way, they frequently represented it as torn by a double distress, each prompting to atrocious actions; as in the Medea of Euripides, where the unhappy wife of Jason distracted by jealousy at the desertion and second marriage of her husband, destroys her own children in the fury of her vengeance against him; or the Hecuba of the same author, where the discrowned and captive widow of Priam, doomed in one day to see her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the dead body of her son washed ashore by the waves, takes a terrible vengeance on his murderer, by putting his children to death, and turning him, after his eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as evils, (κακα.) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the stake. Every one felt a thrill of interest at beholding how another could bear a series of reverses and sufferings, which might any day be his own.

Notwithstanding all our admiration for the Greek tragedies, and firmly believing that they are framed on the true principle of dramatic composition – the neglect of which has occasioned its long-continued decline in this country – we are yet far from thinking them perfect. The age of the world, the peculiarities of ancient manners, rendered it impossible it should be so. We could conceive dramas more perfect and varied than any even of the masterpieces of Sophocles or Euripides. We are persuaded the world will yet see them outdone; though they will be outdone only by those who follow out their principles. But there are three particulars, in which, in modern times, themes of surpassing interest and importance are opened to the dramatic poet, which were of necessity unknown to the writers of antiquity; and it is by blending the skilful use of these with the simplicity and pathos of the Greek originals, that the highest perfection of this noble art is to be attained.

In the first place, the Greeks had no idea whatever of a system of divine superintendence, or moral retribution, in this world. On the contrary their ideas were just the reverse. Fate, superior to the decrees of Jove himself, was the supreme power which they discerned in all the changes of time; and it was the crushing of a human soul beneath its chariot-wheels that they principally delighted to portray. The omnipotence of Fate, in their opinion, was more shown in the destruction than the rewards of the good. Success in life they were willing enough to ascribe to the able conduct of the persons concerned; they only began, like the French, to speak about destiny when they were unfortunate. Their ignorance of the fundamental principles of religion, familiar to every peasant in Europe, shines forth in every page of Sophocles and Euripides. The noblest tragedy of Æschylus, the Prometheus Vinctus, is intended to portray the highest divine benevolence overpowered by supreme power, and eternally suffering under eternal injustice. The frequent overthrow of virtue by wickedness, of innocence by fraud, of gentleness by violence, in this world, seems to have produced an indelible impression on their minds. They not only had no confidence in the divine justice, or the ultimate triumph of virtue over vice, but they had the reverse. They had a mournful conviction that innocence in this vale of tears was everlastingly doomed to suffering; that vice would eternally prove triumphant; and that it was in inward strength and resolution that the only refuge for oppressed virtue was to be found. Their greatest philosophers thought the same. Their tragedies were dramatised Stoicism. Grandeur of character, force of mind, the indomitable will, might be portrayed to perfection under such a belief; but the mild graces, the confidence in God, the resignation to his will, breathed into the human heart by the Gospel, were unknown. What a volume of thoughts and sentiments, of virtues and graces, were wanting in a world to which faith, hope, and charity were unknown! A dramatic Raphael was impossible in antiquity; it was the spirit of the Redeemer which inspired his Holy Families. Their morality, accordingly, is of a sterner cast than any thing with which we are acquainted in modern times. They were full of admiration of the qualities which formed the patriot and the hero, and have portrayed them to perfection in their dramas; but they were ignorant of that more heavenly disposition of mind, which

"sits a blooming bride,
By valour's arm'd and awful side."

They perceived the tendency of firm and unbending virtue to elevate the soul above all that is earthly; but they knew not, in the sublime language of Milton,

"That if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."

As a necessary consequence of this, the dramas of antiquity were destitute of those feelings of PIETY, which form so important a part in the most elevated characters of modern Europe. The ancients carried mere human virtue to the very highest point; in their poetry, their tragedies, their philosophy, they represented man resting on himself alone in the noblest aspect. But they were ignorant of God; they had no correct ideas of Heaven. The devotion to the divine will, the forgetfulness of self, the reliance on Supreme protection to innocence, the appeal to the Almighty, and the judgment of another world against the injustice of this, which runs through the most exalted conceptions of modern times, were to them unknown. Their ideas of the celestial beings were entirely drawn from human models: Olympus was peopled by gods and goddesses animated by passions, divided by jealousies, stimulated by desires entirely akin to those which are felt in this world. The shades below were a dark and gloomy region, the entrance to which was placed in the jaws of Vesuvius, or the dreary expanse of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, through which the cries of the damned in Tartarus incessantly resounded; and where even the blessed spirits in Elysium were continually regretting the joys and excitement of the upper world. Dante, in his Inferno, has painted to the life their prevailing ideas of futurity; the next world to them contained nothing but successive circles of Malebolge. Homer has expressed their feeling in a line, when he makes Achilles, in Elysium, say to Ulysses, on his descent to the infernal regions, that he would rather command the Grecian army one day, than dwell where he was through an infinity of ages. Compare this with the ideas of the Crusaders in modern Europe; with the death of the chivalric Bayard, when, mortally wounded, seated on the ground, with his eyes fixed on the cross of his sword, he said to the victorious Constable de Bourbon, "Pity not me – pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath!"

Lastly, the passion of love, as it is understood and felt in modern times, was unknown in antiquity; and to those who reflect how important a part it bears in the romances and plays of Europe, this will probably appear like performing Hamlet with the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted on the occasion. It was impossible they could have it, because their manners were much more Oriental than European; and young persons of opposites sexes rarely, if ever, met before marriage. They had a perfect idea of the mutual affection which arises after marriage; the tenderness of Hector and Andromache never has been surpassed in any tongue. With the passions of the harem they were perfectly familiar, and the dreadful pangs of jealousy never have been painted with more consummate ability, or more thorough knowledge of human nature. Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them; the passion of Phædra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce any resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human heart in modern times, that of Othello for Desdemona, of Tancrede for Clorinda, of Corinne for Oswald, was unknown in antiquity. Even the passions described by Ovid, which arose amidst the freer manners of the Roman patricians, had little resemblance to the refined sentiments, the bequest of the age of chivalry; the one was founded on the subjugation of mind by the senses, the other on the oblivion of the senses in the mind. What a vast addition to the range and interest of the drama has the refining and spiritualizing of this master-passion of the human breast, by the influence of Christianity, and the institutions of chivalry, made; and how inexcusable does it render modern genius, if, with such an additional chord to touch in the human heart, it has never yet rivalled the great models of antiquity!

And has modern genius not yet equalled the masterpieces of the drama in ancient Greece? We answer, decidedly not – either on the Continent or this country – any more than modern sculpture has rivalled the perfections of Grecian statuary. Neither in the old French and Italian school, which followed the ancient models, nor in the Romantic school in which old England and young France proposed to rival it, has any thing approaching to the interest and pathos of the Athenian dramatists been produced. It is not difficult to see what have been the causes of this inferiority, and they seem to have been these.

The regular drama of France was addressed, entirely and exclusively, to the court, the noble, and the highly educated classes. It was nothing more than an extension of the theatres of Versailles. The opinion of Louis XIV., his ministers or mistresses, of the Duke of Orleans, and a few leading nobles of Louvois, and one or two statesmen, were all in all. The approbation of the king stamped a tragedy in public opinion, as his dancing with her stamped the estimation of a new court beauty. The voice and feelings of the middle or lower ranks of society had no more to say on the subject than they had in the formation of court dresses, or the etiquette of the Œil de Bœuf. They took their opinions from that of the magnates of the land, as milliners and tailors now do from the dresses of London and Paris. Rank and fashion were paramount in literature, as they are still in manner, dancing, and etiquette. It was impossible that the drama, addressed to, and having its success dependent on, the approbation of such an audience, could faithfully paint the human heart. The stately dances and haughty seigneurs of Versailles, would have been shocked with the vehement bursts of passion, the pathetic traits of nature, the undisguised expression of feeling, which appeared in Euripides and Sophocles, and entranced the mixed and more natural audience of Athens. It would have appeared vulgar and painful; it revealed what it was the great object of art and education to conceal. The stately Alexandrine verses, the sonorous periods, the dignified and truly noble thoughts, which so strongly characterize the French tragedies, arose naturally, and perhaps unavoidably, from the habits and tastes of the exclusive aristocratic circle to which they were addressed. In addition to this, the audience were all highly educated; at least according to the ideas and habits of the times. Classical images were those which recalled the most pleasing associations in every mind; classical events awakened the emotions most likely to prove generally attractive. The ancient models were before every mind, from the effect of early and universal education. Classical allusions and subjects were as unavoidable, as they now are in the prize poems of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a narrow and dignified feudal circle.

Making allowance for this peculiarity, and considering the drama as, from this cause, diverted from its real object and highest flight, it is impossible to conceive any thing more perfect than the masterpieces of the French stage. Corneille was their greatest composer; he had most original genius, and was least fettered by artificial rules. He was the Æschylus of the French theatre. Voltaire said, that the king's ministers should be compelled to attend the performance of his finest pieces, to acquire the knowledge of human nature, and statesmanlike views requisite for the government of man. Napoleon said, if Corneille had lived in his time, he would have made him a counsellor of state; for he alone, of all writers, felt the overpowering importance of state necessity. The great Condé wept at the generosity of sentiment portrayed in his Britannicus. It is impossible to conceive any thing more dignified and elevated, more calculated to rouse the generous and lofty feelings, to nourish that forgetfulness of self and devotion to others, which is the foundation of every thing great and good in this world, than his finest tragedies. They are, however, very unequal. Cinna, Les Horaces, the Cid, and Rodogune, are his masterpieces; it is they which have won for him, by the consent of all nations, the surname of "le Grand Corneille." But still it is not nature which is generally represented in his tragedies. It is an ideal nature, seven foot high, clad in impenetrable panoply, steeled against the weaknesses, as above the littlenesses of humanity. Persons of a romantic, lofty tone of mind, will to the end of the world be fascinated by his pages; heroic resolutions, great deeds, will ever be prompted by his sentiments. But they are above the standard of common life. They evince a deep knowledge of human nature, but of human nature in noble and heroic bosoms only – and that is widely different from what it obtains with ordinary men. Hence his pieces are little adapted for general representation; and certainly, even the best translations of them never could succeed in this country.

Racine is a more general favourite than Corneille, because he paints feelings more commonly experienced; but he wants his great and heroic sentiments. No one ever thought of calling him the Great. Less deeply embued with the lofty spirit of chivalry, less romantic in his structure, less commanding in his ideas, he is more polished, more equal, and has a greater command of the pathetic. He is to Corneille what Virgil was to Homer, what Raphael to Michael Angelo. The anguish of the human heart was what he chiefly loved to represent, because he felt that there he excelled; and hence his tragedies are chiefly formed on the Greek model, and on the subjects already treated by Sophocles and Euripides. Agamemnon, Achilles, Alcestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Œdipus, Hermione, Jocasta, Antigone, reappear on his pages, as in those of the masters of the Greek drama. But they reappear in a modern dress. They are very different from the inimitable simplicity of the originals. The refinements, conceits, extravagant flattery, politeness, and stately manners of the Grand Monarque, shine through every line. Achilles makes love to Iphigenia as if she were in the marbled gardens of Versailles; the passion of Phèdre for Hippolyte, is the refined effusion of modern delicacy, not the burning fever and maniac delirium of Phædra in Euripides. His Greek heroes and heroines address each other as if they were in the Œil de Bœuf; it is "monsieur" and "madame" at every step. Under classical names, and with the scene laid in distant lands, it is still the ancient régime of France which is portrayed in all his pieces – it is the passions and distresses of an old and highly civilized society which are depicted. Even Athalie, his masterpiece, has none of the ancient Jewish spirit in it; it is the modern priesthood which is represented as resisting oppression in the temple of Jerusalem. But the beauty of language, the melody of versification, the delicacy of sentiments, the frequent touches of the pathetic which his writings exhibit, will for ever secure him a high place in the opinion of men; and justify the saying of Voltaire, that whoever would acquire a pure and elegant French style, must have the Petit Carême of Massillon, and Athalie of Racine, constantly lying on his writing table.

Voltaire, though he adhered, in part at least, to the old subjects in his tragedies, is far more various and discursive in his mode of treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time agitated the human race. The East, with its sultans, its harems, its sultanas, and its jealousies, strongly arrested his imagination, and furnished the subjects of some of his finest pieces; witness Mahomet, Bajazet, Tamerlane, and Zaïre. For this reason his tragedies are more general favourites now than either those of Corneille or Racine; you will see the audience in the parterre of the Théâtre Français repeating whole speeches from Brutus, Alzire, or Le Fanatisme, after the performer on the stage. They have sunk deeper into the general mind than any of their predecessors; more of their lines have become household expressions, as is the case with Shakspeare, Gray, and Campbell in England, than those of any other author in the French language. Voltaire, too, was strongly impressed with the necessity of keeping up the interest of his piece from first to last; he drives on the story with an untiring hand, and even before the final catastrophe, contrives to produce a passing excitement at every step, by subordinate and yet important events. What he constantly complains of in his admirable commentaries on Corneille is, that, in his inferior pieces at least, that great master lets the story flag, the interest die away, and that, trusting to the fascination of his language, the power of his thoughts, he neglects the important matters of dramatic power and stage effect. His perfect knowledge of both these important auxiliaries of his art, is not the least of Voltaire's many excellences; and has secured for him, to all appearance permanently, if not the first, unquestionably the most popular place in the French theatre. But still his dramas do not represent nature. They are noble pieces of rhetoric put into rhyme. They are the ablest possible debate arrayed in the pomp of Alexandrine verse. But they do not touch the heart like a few words in Sophocles, Euripides, or Shakspeare.

Metastasio was fettered by a double set of rules; for he was compelled to attend at once to the dramatic unities of Aristotle, and the musical restraints of the opera. It was no common genius which, amidst such difficulties, could produce a series of dramas which should not merely charm the world, when arrayed in the enchanted garb of the opera, with all the attractions of music and scenery, but form a perpetual subject of pleasing study to the recluse, far from the pomp and magnificence of theatric representation. It is impossible to imagine any thing more attractive than his dramas, considered as visionary pieces. Formed on the events of the ancient world, he depicts, under the name of Alexander, Titus, Dido, Regulus, Cæsar, and Cleopatra, ideal beings having about as much resemblance to real mortals as the nymphs of the ballet have to ordinary women, or the recitative of Mozart to the natural human voice. But still they are very charming. If they are not a feature of this world, they are a vision of something above it; of a scene in which the littlenesses and selfishness of mortality are forgotten; in which virtue is generally in the end triumphant; in which honour in women proves victorious over love, and fortitude in men obtains the mastery of fortune. Generosity and magnanimity beyond what could have been even conceived, often furnishes the dénouement of the piece, and extricates the characters from apparently insurmountable difficulties. There can be no doubt this is not human life: Alexander the Great, Dido, Regulus, are not of every day's occurrence. But the total departure of such representations from the standard of reality, appears less reprehensible in the opera than the ordinary theatre, because the singing and recitative at any rate remove it from off the pale of mortality. We take up one of his dramas as we go to the opera, not to see any picture of actual existence, or any thing which shall recall the experienced feelings of the human heart, but to be charmed by a fairy tale, which, if it does not paint the stern realities of life, at least charms by its imagination.

The more impassioned mind and vehement passions of Alfieri disdained those trammels by which the French and Italian stages had so long been fettered. Gifted by nature with an ardent imagination, impetuous feelings, deep and lasting emotions, he early saw that the modern drama, founded on, and fettered by, the strict observance of the Greek unities, and yet discarding its broken and rapid diction, its profound knowledge of the human heart, its vehement expression of passion, had departed far from the real object of the art, and could not be brought back to it but by a total change of system. He has himself told us, in his most interesting life, that when he read the tragedies of Racine and Corneille, the book fell from his hands. They conveyed no idea whatever of reality; they had no resemblance to the ardent feelings which he felt burning in his own breast. Anxiously seeking vent for passions too fierce to be controlled, he found it in the study of the Greek drama. The wrath of Medea, the heroism of Antigone, the woes of Andromache, the love of Phædra, found a responsive echo in his bosom; they combined every thing he could desire, they represented every thing that he felt. He saw what Tragedy had been – what it ought to be. His taste was immediately formed on the true model. When he came to write tragedies himself, he composed them on the plan of Sophocles. He did more. He made the language as brief, the voice of passion as powerful, the plot as simple; but he brought even fewer characters on the stage. He trusted entirely to the force of passion the wail of suffering, the accents of despair. Immense was the effect of this recurrence to unsophisticated feeling, in a luxurious and effeminate society. It was like the burst of admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was something new; they had never heard her voice before.

Had Alfieri, with this ardent mind and clear perception of the true end of the drama, been endowed with that general knowledge of the human heart, and of human character in all its bearings, which the Greek dramatists possessed he would have formed the greatest tragedian of modern continental Europe. But in these vital particulars he was very deficient. His position in society, character, and habits, precluded him from acquiring it. The dissipated, heartless nobleman, who flew from one devoted passion to another, without the slightest compunction as to their effects on the objects of his adoration; who fought Lord Ligonier in the Park, in pursuance of an intrigue with his lady; and stole from the Pretender his queen, when age and dissipation had wellnigh brought him to the grave; who traversed, post-haste, France and Italy with fourteen blood-horses, which he wore out in his impetuous course, was not likely either to feel the full force of the generous, or paint the real features of the selfish passion. He did not mingle with the ordinary world on a footing of equality. This it is which ever makes aristocratic and high-bred authors ignorant of the one thing needful in history or the drama – a knowledge of human nature. No man ever learned that, who had not been practically brought into collision with men in all ranks, from the highest to the lowest. Hence his characters are almost all overdrawn. Vice and virtue are exhibited in too undisguised colours; the malignity of the wicked is laid too bare to the reader. He makes the depraved admit they are bad, but yet persevere in their crimes; a certain proof that he did not know the human heart. He knew it better who said, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Napoleon knew it better when he said to Talma, after seeing his representation of Nero in Britannicus– "You are quite wrong in your idea of Nero; you should conceal the tyrant. No man admits he was guilty either to himself or others." Alfieri himself is a proof of it: he recounts, in his life, many criminal acts he committed, but never with the slightest allusion to their having been wrong. He admitted, later in life, that he had been ignorant of human nature in the great body of mankind; for he said, on recounting the horrors of the 10th August, which he had witnessed at Paris – "Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne connais pas les petits."

It is hard to say whether Schiller belongs to the Greek or Romantic school in the drama. His subjects are in great part chosen from the latter class: he changes the scene, and did not hold himself bound by the rules of Aristotle. But in his mode of treating these subjects, he approaches more nearly to the tragedians of antiquity. He utterly discarded the limited range of subjects, and measured pomp of the French drama; he felt that the world had grown old since the days of Euripides, and that it was time for tragedy to embrace a wider range of subjects than the family disasters which followed the return of the Greeks from the siege of Troy. He knew that it was not in stately rhyme or measured cadences, that passion finds vent from the human breast. He was essentially historical in his ideas. The past with its vast changes and endless variety of events, lay open before him. And he availed himself of all its riches. He is unequalled in the ability with which he threw himself into his subject, identified himself, not merely with the characters, but the periods in which they arose, and brought before the mind of the spectators the ideas, interests, passions, and incidents, the collision of which produced the catastrophe which formed the immediate subject of his piece. The best informed English or Scottish historians will have something to learn on the history of Queen Mary, from the incomparable summary of arguments for and against her detention in captivity by Queen Elizabeth, in the two first acts of his noble tragedy of Mary Stuart. The learned Spaniard will find himself transported to the palace of the Escurial, and the frightful tragedies of its bigoted court, in his terrible tragedy of Don Carlos. Schiller rivals Shakspeare himself in the energy with which, by a word or an epithet, he paints the fiercest or tenderest passions of the heart: witness the devoted love of Thekla for Max in Wallenstein; or the furious jealousy of the Queen in Don Carlos. He has not the grotesque of Shakspeare; we do not see in his tragedies that mixture of the burlesque and the sublime which is so common in the Bard of Avon, and is not infrequent with the greatest minds, who play, as it were, with the thunderbolts, and love to show how they can master them. Hence, in reading at least, his dramas produce a more uniform and unbroken impression than those of the great Englishman, and will, with foreign nations, command a more general admiration. But the great charm in Schiller is the romantic turn of mind, the noble elevation of sentiment, the truly heroic spirit, with which his tragedies abound. In reading them, we feel that a new intellectual soil has been turned up in the Fatherland; the human soul, in its pristine purity and beauty, comes forth from beneath his hand; it reappears like the exquisite remains of Grecian statuary, which, buried for ages in superincumbent ruins, emerge pure and unstained in virgin snow, when a renewal of cultivation has again exposed them to the light. If he were equally great at all times, he would have been the most perfect dramatist of modern times. But he is far from being so. At times he is tedious; often dull; it is his great scenes, such as the last sacrament of Queen Mary, which have gained for him his colossal reputation, and produce an indelible impression on the mind of his reader.

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits and we have only got through half our subject. A noble theme remains: Shakspeare, with the Romantic drama, will be treated in the Number which is to follow; and the causes considered which have brought the school, created by such a master, into the state of comparative mediocrity in which, with some brilliant exceptions, it is now placed.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS

No. III

Mr W. Wellington Hurst

It would probably puzzle Mr William Wellington Hurst, as much as any man, to find out on what grounds I placed him on the list of my College friends; for certainly our intimacy was hardly sufficient to warrant such a liberty; and he was one of those happy individuals who would never have suspected that it could be out of gratitude for much amusement afforded me by sundry of his sayings and doings. But so it is; and it happens, that while the images of many others of my companions – very worthy good sort of fellows, whom I saw more or less of nearly every day – have vanished from my memory, or only flit across occasionally, like shadows, the full-length figure of Mr W. Wellington Hurst, exactly as he turned out, after a satisfactory toilet, in the patent boots and scarf of many colours, stands fixed there like a daguerreotype – more faithful than flattering.

My first introduction to him was by running him down in a skiff, when I was steering the College eight – not less to his astonishment than our own gratification. It is perfectly allowable, by the laws of the river, if, after due notice, these small craft fail to get out of your way; but it is not very easy to effect. However, in this instance, we went clean over him, very neatly indeed. The men helped him into our boat, just as his own sunk from under him; and he accepted a seat by my side in the stern-sheets, with many apologies for being so wet, appearing considerably impressed with a sense of my importance, and still more of my politeness. When we reached Sandford, I prescribed a stiff tumbler of hot brandy and water, and advised him to run all the way home, to warm himself, and avoid catching cold; and, from that time, I believe he always looked upon me as a benefactor. The claim, on my part, certainly rested on a very small foundation originally; it was strengthened afterwards by a less questionable act of patronage. Like many other under-graduates of every man's acquaintance, Hurst laboured under the delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the proctor, was an opus operatum of the highest possible merit. To do him justice, he laboured diligently in the only exercise which he seemed to consider strictly academical – he spent an hour every morning, standing upon a chair, "catching flies," as he called it, and occasionally flicking his scout with a tandem whip, and practised incessantly upon tin horns of all lengths, with more zeal than melody, until he got the erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors. Yet he was more ambitious than successful. His reputation on the road grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the bottom of a hill, pretty much in the Olympic fashion – all four abreast – men got rather shy of any expeditions of the kind in his company. There was little credit in it, and a good deal of danger. First, he was reduced to soliciting the company of freshmen, who were flattered by any proposal that sounded fast. But they, too, grew shy, after one or two ventures; and poor Hurst soon found a difficulty in getting a companion at all. He was a liberal fellow enough, and not pushed for a guinea when his darling science was concerned: so he used to offer to "sport the train" himself; but even when he condescended to the additional self-devotion of standing a dinner and champagne, he found that the closest calculators among his sporting acquaintance had as much regard for their necks as their pockets.

To this inglorious position was his fame as a charioteer reduced, when Horace Leicester and myself, early in his third term, had determined somewhat suddenly to go to see a steeple-chase about twelve miles off, where Leicester had some attraction beside the horses, in the shape of a pretty cousin; (two, he told me, and bribed me with the promise of an introduction to "the other," but she did not answer to sample at all.) We had engaged a very nice mare and stanhope, which we knew we could depend upon, when, the day before the race, the chestnut was declared lame, and not a presentable four-legged animal was to be hired in Oxford. Hurst had engaged his favourite pair of greys (which would really go very well with any other driver) a week beforehand, but had been canvassing the last batch of freshmen in vain for an occupant of the vacant seat. A huge red-headed north-country man, who had never seen a tandem in his life, but who, as far as pluck went, would have ridden postilion to Medea's dragons, was listening with some apparent indecision to Hurst's eloquence upon the delights of driving, just as we came up after a last unsuccessful search through the livery stables; and the pair were proceeding out of college arm in arm, probably to look at the greys, when Leicester, to my amusement, stepped up with – "Hurst, who's going with you to B – ?"

"I – why, I hardly know yet; I think Sands here will, if" —

"I'll go with you then, if you like; and if you've got a cart, Hawthorne can come too, and it will be very jolly."

If the university had announced their intention of creating him a B.A. by diploma, without examination, Hurst could hardly have looked more surprised and delighted. Leicester, it should be borne in mind, was one of the most popular men in the college – a sort of arbiter elegantiarum in the best set. Hurst knew very little of him, but was no doubt highly flattered by his proposal. From coaxing freshmen to come out by the bribe of paying all expenses, to driving to B – steeple-chase side by side with Horace, (my modesty forbids me to include myself,) was a step at once from the ridiculous to the sublime of tandemizing. For this advancement in life, he always, I fancy, considered himself indebted to me, as I had originally introduced him to Leicester's acquaintance; and when we both accepted an invitation, which he delivered himself of with some hesitation, to breakfast in his rooms on the morning of the expedition, his joy and gratitude appeared to know no bounds. It is not usual, be it remembered, for a junior man in college to ask a senior to a party from whom he has never received an invitation himself; but hunting and tandem-driving are apt occasionally to set ordinary etiquette at defiance. "Don't ask a lot of men, that's all – there's a good fellow," said Horace, whose good-natured smile, and off-hand and really winning manner, enabled him to carry off, occasionally, a degree of impudence which would not have been tolerated from others – "I hate a large formal breakfast party of all things; it disgusts me to see a score of men jostling each other over tough beefsteaks."