to these remarks, is not one of the smallest ? *

July 1.-I have idled away the month of June, and I, consequently, do not find an entry in my note-book worth extracting. And I must here break my promise of not meddling with the Roman Catholic controversy, for Dr Phillpotts has come into the field, and, exactly as I expected, wielding the panoply of controversy with the practised hand of a master. I here again grieve for Charles Butler. His guides have imposed on him. A man of his integrity must blush for the use which he has made of the authorities he cites, for instance, of Bishop Montague's opinion as to the intercession of the saints. He caught it most probably from Milner, the most dishonest of all quoters; but I hope it gave him pain to think that he committed the literary crime of citing a man to make others believe that he asserted the very contrary of what he really did assert.

Equally gross is the garbling of the decree of the Council of Trent as to the worship of images. Milner here again has misled Butler. The way in which Phillpotts disposes of Lingard, the quiet, easy, calm manner in which he shows how that most Jesuitical of all writers garbles and misquotes, is admirable. What then can we think of a cause of which Lingard and Milner are the chosen champions? Must there not be something rotten and base in a system which requires such shuffling and imposture to make it appear at all consistent with common sense or common decency? I am sorry that these shifts are endless. Mr Butler is convicted of misquoting Angustine, Calvin, Archbishop Wake, everybody, in short, who comes in his way. Is not this provoking? I agree with Phillpotts that it is entirely owing to his having put trust in his ecclesiastical guides, who made no scruple to commit, what, in the impious language invented by their church, are called pious frauds. I hope he will think on the advice given him by his antagonist," Choose whether you will seek for your church such advantages only as can be obtained by fair and manly argument, or will prefer the

specious, but, in the end, the ruinous course, of aiming at a little temporary triumph by the artifices of the sophist or the calumniator," and select the former part of the offer.

I shall only extract one instance of mis-quotation. "Tradition," says Butler, "in favour of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory is so strong, that Calvin confesses explicitly that during 1300 years before his time, (1600 before ours,) it had been the practice to pray for the dead in the hope of procuring them relief." I choose this passage because it is the shortest of the kind that I can extract. I venture to say it will alarm my Scotch readers for the honour of the reformer of Geneva. They need not be afraid. What Calvin does say is this: (Inst. 1. 3, c. 5, § 10.) "Quum mihi OBJICIUNT ADVERSARII ante mille et trecentos annos usu receptum fuisse ut precationes fierent pro defunctis eos vicissim interrogo, quo Dei verbo, &c. factum sit." He goes on to say, that even granting that the ancient ecclesiastical writers deemed it pious to pray for the dead, yet that they did it from different motives from those of his antagonists. "Agebant illi memoriam mortuorum ne viderentur omnem de ipsis curam abjecisse, sed simul fatebantur se dubitare de ipsorum statu. De purgatorio certe adeo nihil assererent, ut pro re incerta haberent." This, it seems, is Calvin's implicit confession in favour of purgatory! And then mark the honesty of attributing to him, as his own assertion, the objection of an adversary whom he was answering! It is a pity.

Doctor P.'s book deserves a more careful review than what I can afford to give it in these light sketches. I cannot pass it by, however, without admiring the solid and dignified style in

which it is composed. The peroration is a model of chaste and pious eloquence which I never have seen surpassed. He possesses wit in no inconsiderable degree, as is evident in his account of the nonsensical proceedings of the second Nicene Council. On the whole, this book may lay claim to the rare merit of possessing the learning and irresistible argument of the Phileleutherus Lipsiensis without any par

ticle of the coarseness which too often characterized Bentley.

July 3.-Novels are pleasant reading in warm weather. I am not in jest. It is actually a relief, after having harassed yourself with the hard reading of polemics, under a thermometer indicating tropical heat, to turn away to a book, in which no demand is made upon your thinking faculty. Gray used to say, that his idea of Paradise was lying on a sofa, and reading eternal new novels-I believe he added of Crebillon, which was a naughty wish for a grave poet to indulge in. Ireland seems to be the order of the day now. I have three Irish novels lying on my table-O'Hara, Tales by the O'Hara Family, and To-day in Ireland. And more are, it seems, either actually in existence, or springing into it. Let me get through them.

O'Hara, written, I am told, by a chaplain of my Lord Sligo's, was refused by Murray, and is published by Andrews. I think he of Albemarle Street was wiser than him of Bond Street. The incidents are dull, and the writing indifferent. But it is cruel to wage war on the dead-and this novel must have by this time gone to the tomb of all the Capulets. Unless he mend prodigiously, its author never will shine in novelizing. But I confess I have a dread of prophesying dogmatically, even in such a case as this-remembering that the Edinburgh Review assured us that Lord Byron never would be able to succeed in poetry -and Mr Hunt demonstrated that Sir Walter Scott had no talent for prose. So, as it is not impossible that the author of O'Hara may not write a novel better than Waverley, I shall not hazard my character by predicting it. I must say, it is not particularly probable.

The Tales by the O'Hara Family, which are written by Mr Banim, and To-day in Ireland, (rather a queer title,) by Mr Crowe, are better things. These authors are both young Irishmen. They give, indeed, very different pictures of their native land; and there would be no difficulty in deciding which are their respective creeds. One single text is a complete Shibboleth. A Roman Catholic priest, in Mr Crowe's tales, is the prime mover of the Irish rustic insurrection-in Mr Banim's, he only appears to anathematize all concerned in them. What religion, my

good reader, is Mr Banim-and what religion is Mr Crowe?

Banim possesses the power of managing his story very well. In his first tale, Crohoore of the Bill-book, it is impossible to anticipate the event; and yet when known, it is seen that the whole progress of the story tended to it. This in novel-writing is a great merit. We have the authority of Aristotle; and though Mr Dugald Stewart and other learned people undervalue him, I should take his word in these matters for a thousand pounds

that the invention and ordering of incident is a higher and rarer power than even the delineation of character. The third story, John Doe, is also very well got through, though it is hurried at the end. In his second tale, The Fetches-(a fetch, it seems, is the apparition of a living person when death is thereby denoted)-Banim commits the not unusual mistake of making use of supernatural events so frequently as to deprive them of their power. A spectre figure appears in it four or five times-so often, that people must have been quite prepared for the visit. Yet there are in this story, some love passages and descriptions of scenery, which display no ordinary talent; and altogether it possesses the melancholy charm of our certainty of its having a lamentable end, which, to me, is almost the most touching thing in the world. We interest ourselves in the fate of persons, who, we know, in spite of our heart, are doomed to destruction. This appears, in my mind, the most pleasing way of taking advantage of the principle of Fate, as insisted upon by the Germans. It shines in peculiar beauty in the Bride of Lammermoor, which will be for ever to me the most delightful of all the delightful works which we owe to the Great Magician, who dwelleth by the old fastness."

Crowe's novels are gayer, and appear as if the author had mixed more with the world. The Carders is a most interesting story, told in a pleasing and perspicuous style. The principal conspirator is well conceived and managed. (I was going to say execu ted, but I was afraid of the pun, for he is hanged.) His Old and New Light contains much clever writing, and indicates that the author has looked on the characters of Irish society with a scrutinizing eye. He commits one

marked error, however. He introduces living people almost by name; for instance, Sir Harcourt Lees figures in this story as Sir Starcourt Gibbs. This is mixing up two different departments of writing. A novel ought to depict the species rather than the individual. No actual character can, in all its traits, answer the purposes of the novelist-there is too much of the every-day life in the most peculiar and romantic personage among us. Hence new circumstances must be added-new points of manners introduced-as here, where Sir Harcourt is made to marry a flirt, which carries on the story, but spoils the character. Mr Martin of Galway, in another and most amusing story, is quite a hero of romance, going to fight a duel with an unknown son, about a mistress. Does this cohere with our knowledge of Martin, who is depicted in the beginning of the tale just as we are accustomed to consider him? Mr Crowe must avoid this mistake the next time he writes. His tales are so clever and

amusing, that I cannot help hoping we are not done with him. Indeed, in the present state of the market, there is no great chance of such a catastrophe occurring to the author of a successful romance.

I said these gentlemen are youngunder thirty, I am told. It is a pleasant fault to be charged with--but in this particular species of writing it is not an accomplishment. This kind of writing requires a large knowledge of facts, and a wide intercourse with society, to be done with superior power. Books will do much-the habitual process of thinking, or the goings-on of the world, will do more. I am not speaking of merely poetical novelsfor poetry is a gift of the gods-and their being written in prose does not affect the powers of their author any more than if they were in direct verse. Goethe wrote Werter, I believe, at twenty-at that age no man could have written Old Mortality or Tom Jones. Such books, be they grave or gay, good-humoured or sarcastic, must take

whom I am speaking will believe this. They will set me down as one who, having outlived his youth himself, envies the possession of it in others. I cannot help it; but, in truth, I envy them not their lot on this account. I should envy them, indeed, for their talents, were I to permit that good-fornothing passion to get into my bosom on any account whatsoever.

Without in the slightest degree disparaging the novels above-mentioned, I must say that there is a peculiar difficulty in writing novels on Ireland. It is this. In that country they have had the wisdom to retain all the enmities and feuds of some five or six centuries in perfect vigour to the present day. The writer of a novel, the scene of which is laid in the days of Queen Elizabeth, is obliged to flatter or exasperate some existing party of the days of George IV. In England all feuds are forgotten. It should be actually a party pamphlet which would call up angry feelings now. So, in a great measure, if not entirely, in Scotland-though the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum still is ready to take fire at some pieces of history-for instance, Queen Mary. In this, as in many other things, England is the most sensible country of the three. Besides this, the continual demand that is made in Ireland on every man to roll his tub in politics, naturally gives a bias to the mind. A Roman Catholic never would have drawn a Jesuit as Mr Crowe has done. That the Jesuits are a mischievously-disposed body, I firmly believe -and I look on their introduction into Ireland as a most uncalled-for insult to the Protestant population, whose prejudices against that order, even allowing them to be but prejudices, ought to have hindered people, who were talking of conciliation, &c. and asking allowance for their own prejudices, from insisting on the intrusion -but I do not think they have any power, far less that they direct the operations of Captain Rock. They are, I believe, very middling schoolmas ters, and that is all. Mr Banim attributes the insurrections chiefly to the tithe-proctor. That part of his first tale, in which the proctor is introduced, is very cleverly, and occasionally very pathetically written-and the character is well sketched-but did the author not reflect, that the doctrine of the politicians who attribute

under other claims, exact the remaining four-fifths? Why, if the proctor's shillings be so completely productive of ruin, do not the landlord's pounds inflict any misery? I beg to be understood not as defending any abuses, but it is not right to attribute to anything more harm than it can do. I refer those who wish to see the question fairly argued, to Mr O'Sullivan's Captain Rock Detected.

all the misfortunes of Ireland to such a cause, rested on very untenable grounds? Suppose we take the most exaggerated statement, and say, that between the clergyman and proctor a fifth of the produce be taken-a calculation marvellously exaggerated, particularly when it is considered that there is no tithe of agistment in Ireland; that potatoes are not in general tithed; that mintage, altarage, and small dues, are almost unknown-Suppose, I say, that the whole thus raised off the tenant amount to a fifth of his produce-in fact it is about a twentieth-and supposing, also, that the people are in the state of misery and distress in which he paints them -what are we to say of those, who,

I am not saying that the politics of either Mr Crowe or Mr Banim are unpleasantly obtruded, for the contrary is the case-but I notice the fact of the necessity of their introduction at all into works of agreeable fiction, as a peculiar and unhappy feature of their country.

Ir was natural that a work which ranges so freely and fearlessly as yours through our general literature, should not have long overlooked so interesting and important a portion of it as the drama; and I have been, in common with, I presume, a great many of your readers, much attracted by your late papers on the General Authorship and Circumstances of the Stage. The want of popular tragedies and comedies is the question, and a multitude of conjectures have been hazarded as to the cause. It has been imputed successively to a popular disregard of the stage; to a prevalent taste for spectacle; to the late dinnerhours of the higher ranks; to the failure of distinct public and professional character, &c. One of your correspondents attributes it to the habit of employing the higher order of actors for only a certain number of nights; others assign it to the nonchalance and tastelessness of managers, &c.

All those causes may contribute, but I am satisfied that they affect the acknowledged deficit of able dramatic writing, in an extremely slight degree. Let me propose my theory, founded on a rather close and continued observation of the workings of the national stage.

The first cause of the dramatic dearth, is the extreme difficulty of dramatic composition; and the second

and last is, its extremely inadequate emolument. I perfectly believe, from a considerable knowledge of the habits and labours of some of our popular writers, in different styles of literature, that the writing of a good comedy or tragedy is among the most laborious and brain-exhausting works of

man.

One of your correspondents in your last Number, announces his opinion of it, however, as a perfectly trivial affair, and requiring nothing, but

"A powerful intellect! a vivid imagination! a keen insight into human nature, particularly into its passions," and then triumphantly asks, "where is the prodigious difficulty of writing a good tragedy?" To this I answer, none whatever; and when we shall find first-rate intellect, imagination, and knowledge of human passion combined, we shall have found the true writer of tragedy, and the true phonix besides. But are we to be told that this combination of the finest powers of the complete man, genius acting upon keen and extensive observation of life, is a bagatelle?

His receipt for a tragedy is of the same summary and undeniable order.

"Take an impressive story, and interesting agents, revolve incidents and characters in your mind, as you see them revolving in the real world, and a tragedy will almost create itself!".

We perfectly agree in the conclusion; but to collect the premises is

the difficulty. How many men alive are there capable of revolving incidents and characters as they see them in the real world? and does not this, as it forms the highest praise of the poet, form also his supreme difficulty?

Your correspondent proceeds to elucidate the happy and general facility of the art, by telling us, that the tragic writer" has but to enter the body of a fellow-creature, whom fate may have placed in pathos or peril, and retaining the self-possession of his own identity, in the midst of his impersonation of another, to tell what has been revealed to him of his nature by a closer intimacy with agonies, hitherto unexperienced, even by his imagination.'

This is eloquently said, and as truly as eloquently; and what is this, after all, but a description of the very highest and rarest exercise of the human mind?

To throw ourselves completely into the state of another, to conceive with force and truth the whole conflict of his mind, the whole various and strongly excited tempest of his passions, is to be, not simply the describer, but the creator of a whole inner world of "pathos and peril," to have the power of summoning up all the potent and reluctant shapes of fondness and sorrow, of noble love, of furious ambition, of overwhelming and cureless despair. What is this but to be master of the whole depths and powers of the human heart? and how few men, even among our most popular writers, have exhibited the power of fathoming those depths? I entirely agree with your animated correspondent in all his requisites. I allow that Tragedy demands nothing beyond them, but if she demands them all, the question of the scarcity of great tragedies seems to me at once answered.

There is another quality of no inconsiderable importance-a poetic diction suitable to stage delivery. This too is so rare, that among the great variety of fine blank verse produced in the present day, I should find some difficulty in pointing out a single specimen fitted for that dramatic recitation, which allowing, and even demanding, the highest graces of poetry, demands that they shall be compatible with the dialogue of men engaged in the business of actual life. Condensation, the greatest possible quantity VOL. XVIII

of thought compressed into the smallest possible space, is the essential. This power of succinct, solid, and pointed expression, was the finest praise of the Greek style of both poetry and oratory. How few among us possess this last result of vigorous thought and practised taste! I must also disagree with your correspondent in his practical evidences of the facility of tragic writing. He says that we have "a thousand noble tragedies, while the number of effective, though not first-rate compositions of the same class, is altogether incalculable."

I presume that it is important to the character of a first-rate tragedy to be capable of exciting popular interest on the stage. A play not fit to be played is an anomaly, and out of our calculation.

Now the fact is, that, excepting the plays of one man, and that man confessedly at the head of British genius, and perhaps of all poetic genius, we have not a decidedly popular tragedy in the language. "Venice Preserved," perhaps takes its place, in public interest, next to Shakspeare's dramas; and this unquestionably more from the aptitude of Belvidera, ranting and tearful as she is, to the general powers of stage heroines, than from any strong public attraction of the plot or the poetry. Isabella, and a few other works of the same rank, are regularly brought forward to exhibit the various powers of a tragic debutante, or to relieve the perpetual succession of Shakspeare's plays; but the whole class are looked on only as reliefs that are played on compulsion, and are laid by for the displays of the next debutante.

The tragedies of the old famous dramatists have been occasionally revived within these few years, chiefly in consequence of the revived fame of the Elizabethan age. But poetic and imaginative as the style of that original and powerful day is, they have been found incapable of exciting public interest. Their forced situations, irregular and improbable plots, and general violence to character and nature, were not felt to be redeemable by even their incomparable poetry. What those great names could not do, few could do among men, and none of their posterity have done. Instead of a thousand noble English tragedies, we have not a first-rate one, except within the leaves of Shakspeare.

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