Unless I may die too.

Agnes. Where am I?-Babington ! I shall be strong anon. 'Tis past; forgive me

If, when I look'd upon this place, my heart

Did die within me-but forgive me, sir, It was a woman's weakness.

Bab. Thou art all good

But who did guard thee here? Why would'st thou come?

This is no place for gentleness like thine. Agnes. Ask'st thou who guarded hither, Babington ?

Heaven! Wherefore I would come, oh ask me not!

Bab. And wherefore not, dear child? Agnes. (Solemnly.) Because that wherefore

Is nothing now either to thee or me.No breath hath ever known't, and, there

No man attended them. No pitying voice Did bid, "God help them." There they stood, alone,

With serene countenances, as't had been Some solemn festival; until the wretches Whose callous hands were to wring forth their breaths,

Laid bare their patient necks. They stood together

And silently join'd hands.

When Babington Saw the young, gallant Tichbourne, his dear friend,

Submit him to the cord-for on him first The villain hangman laid his horrid hand, -His manly visage changed, and on his knees

Thou liest!

'Twas Agnes.

Caitiff,

Gif. Why, then, her pure and beautiful

spirit

Hath left its form of clay to wander thi

ther.

By Heaven, they were her living linea

ments.

Bal. (in a suppressed tone.) Go on. Gif. That vision seemed to strike around A visible awe.

It was most pitiful. No sound broke in upon their parting

prayer;

The very ruffians that did do him dead, They seem'd to wait his time. He came to them.

Yea, when his friends had pass'd, he calmly rose

And bent him to the executioner, Whilst she remained still praying on her knees,

Fair as the alabaster; and as fix'd

As is the marble-statue-like, all, save Her lips, which faintly moved.

Bal.
Why dost thou pause
Gif. Because my voice is choked even
'with the thought

Thou bid'st me to give words to.

Bal.

Fool! go on.

Gif. When they had snatch'd him from the fatal beam,

Still stirring with warm life-even at the noise

She turn'd her head, and faintly moved her hand;

And they did lay the dying Babington down, His head upon her lap.

I saw no more! Bel. What would'st thou say, then? Gif. When the crowd recoil'd In horror from the scene that then was

How fickle Fortune is, and Power how vain,

Goodness how helpless, and Humanity How frail-how sinful-and how full of tears

Be thou the minister-and relate to me All the sad turns of this sad history. Now look to thy dead mistress-cover her face

Mine eyes fill even like thine.

Take up the body. She shall have fitting funeral and all duty.

We have not attempted any regular analysis of this tragedy, but have preferred giving copious extracts, which will speak for themselves, disjointed as they are, and reveal enough of the plot to enable our readers to perceive its drift and termination. The loves of Babington and Agnes constitute, indeed, the soul of the story. Nothing can be more beautiful. The pathos is simple, deep, and powerful. Without any apparent wish to excite tears, tears are made to flow over many a page. And passages there are containing thoughts and feelings that thrill through the heart. Mr Doubleday at all times writes like a scholar. His style is terse, concise, and elegant, to a degree rather uncommon in the writers of this age. He never overdoes anything. Conscious of his powers, he puts them forth with ease and command; and admirable as this composition is, both as a whole, and in numerous detached VOL. XVII.

parts, we have not a doubt that Mr Doubleday is destined to produce something infinitely superior-something that will take its place, perma nently and conspicuously, in English literature.

Now that our readers have been delighted with so much true and powerful poetry, are not their minds disposed to admit, that even in the drama there is not only a noble course still to be run, but men of genius enow in the world for the career? Put Shakspeare out of existence, and what is there to hinder a hundred living men from equalling or surpassing all our other dramatic writers? There is no want of penetrating and philosophical knowledge of human life, and of the human heart; on the contrary, mental ana❤ tomy flourishes as a science. That the thews of life are now tame, its ongoings sluggish and monotonous, its spirit cold and unimaginative, are mere Cockney dicta, fit for London magazines, and arbours in tea-gardens. As magnificent events have "flung their shadows before," and then advanced in substance, during the last thirty years, as ever darkened or illuminated the theatre of the world. There has been no lack of terrible passions and crimes. The peace of nations, families, single bosoms, has been troubled. Tears of blood have flowed, "the voice of weeping heard and loud lament." The surface of life is not so smooth as many men-milliners have, in various periodical works, asserted it to be; but still continues to enjoy alternate calm and tempest, like the watery world. Poets yet feel towards life the same awful emotion that Wordsworth speaks of, as being felt by all men towards the sea, "of the old sea a reverential fear." And therefore-in spite of all the prating of those poor creatures about the exhaustion of the soil, the dearth of passion, the decay of fancy, the torpidity of imagination-year after year, ay, month after month, is some new writer of power appearing, walking of his own accord into some fresh path and province, and gathering laurels on spots where no one suspected the growth of the sacred tree. Since the first_faint light of Crabbe and Rogers, what a galaxy of genius! Never, at any one period of English literature, did so many great poets co-exist; and along with these so many lesser lights, each orb having

R

its own beautiful satellites. There may be much dross mixed with the ore, and the glow of the metal may be sometimes dim; but this is, beyond all doubt, the Golden Age of Poetry.

Suppose that a man of genius were determined to write dramas about private-domestic life, in cities, or in the country-among peers, or peasants What mighty scope! How delightful might such a writer be, were he even to confine himself to what has been done already, contented with doing it over again, as well or better, but differently! How much more delightful, were he not only to beautify the old, but to invent the new! To do so dramatically in the drama is easier far, as we have already shown, than in any other form of poetry; and yet how numerous are the original pictures of domestic life, that have lately been painted in prose tales! Could not the authors of those tales have produced-may they not, will they not-produce domestic tragedies, in scenes and acts, and according to all the rules of the drama?

There is one field of dramatic composition almost entirely unoccupied the romantic. Take for models, The Midsummer-Night's Dream, As You Like it, The Tempest, the Winter's Tale, &c. and some of the works of Ben Jonson and Fletcher. There pure poetry may prevail. The exuberant imagination of this age may there wanton as in its prime. We have many writers amongst us who would excel in

such pictures. There all the beauty, richness, splendour, magnificence of external nature, might be kept before our eyes from opening to catastrophe. Not mere descriptive poetry-not narration upon narration-but a peristrephic panorama of hills, forests, and lakes, with red deer, hunters, and barges, oreads and dryads of flesh and blood, and, to please Barry Cornwall, Pan and Sylvanus, and "the rest," climbing Helvellyn, Snowden, or Bennevis.

Indeed, this last notion suggests another-that of the pastoral drama. Have Theocritus, Virgil, Allan Ramsay, and Burns, exhausted-that is still the word-the shepherd's life? Why, they have done little more than say, "Behold an opening into another world!" In pastoral poetry we have been accustomed to see a couple of idiots sitting," sub tegmine fagi," with their pipes; far better had it been their cigars. But what we wish to see, is the spirit of the pastoral and of the agricultural life-shepherds and ploughmen people the earth. What signify a few millions of individuals congregated together in towns? What is a street in comparison with a glen-a square to a muir-boulevards to a twenty-mile-square pine forest?—The pastoral drama may be made to overflow with tenderness and beauty, like the brightest dream ever broken by morning sunshine; or to wail with universal grief, like the land of Rama when Rachel was weeping for her children.