tisfactory rhythmical principle of blank verse; and that the moment a friend supplied him with one-which we must confess our inability to comprehend he turned his unpublished prose tragedies into blank-verse. Respecting the opinions of Schiller, we possess more information. This author has communicated his views to the public, poetically satirizing the attempt to found tragic interest upon the breaking open of bureaus, or the unlawful pocketing of silver spoons, and metaphysically investigating the theory of the tragic art. We shall not require our readers to accompany us through the mazes of these, under German management at least, recondite inquiries, but content ourselves with communicating to them, as the main result of our exploratory toils, that amidst all the various ideas successively adopted and rejected, one principle appears steadily to have reigned paramount from the very earliest of his addicting himself to such speculations. This principle is, that in tragedy, as in every other department of the fine arts, the first and most indispensable requisite is the preservation of the character of Art in its most vivid distinctness: Not Art, as we have been accustomed to admire it, exert ing its highest powers to assume the semblance of nature, but Art pure and undisguised, as it was seen in the terrace-walks and clipped hedges of our ancestors' gardens. The influence of this principle may be perceived in the later dramas of both Schiller and Goethe; but it is the present school of tragic writers-Goethe, be it remembered, has abandoned the stage -who have most implicitly adopted, and methodized it into a regular system, by the adoption of a style of versification, and the invention of a theory with respect to the structure of the fable of tragedy, which, whatever may be their other merits or demerits, are certainly the genuine and legitimate offspring of Schiller's grand principle, that the character of Art is the first es sential. Of this system, thus completed, we propose to offer some further explanation, and to trace it, as briefly as may be consistent with our object, through several tragedies already known to the readers of this Magazine. After which, we have a few words to say upon the prevalent fashion of de

claiming, in sweeping terms, against the immorality of German literature.

Adolf Müllner, one of the most admired writers of this new school, in his preface to DER NEUN UND ZWANZIGSTE FEBRUAR, the Nine-andTwentieth of February, his first tragic production, explains these new views of the fable of tragedy, of which he was, we believe, the inventor. He asserts, that the tremendous Destiny of the ancients is the only basis adequate to support the high, ennobling, although terrible, effects of tragedy; but that, in order to produce these potent effects, such Destiny must harmonize with our religious creed, the want of which accordance renders the pure mythological Fate of the Greek tragedians unfit for the purposes of their modern successors. This Christian modification of classical Destiny he derives from the rigidly inexorable justice, which not only suffers no crime to escape its due punishment, but has declared that the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children. Justice, stern inflexible justice, is, he maintains, the one divine attribute which must constantly be kept in view in tragic composition, whilst he reprobates all declamation upon the mercy of Heaven, as fit only for the maudlin sentimentality of the novelist.

Our readers will hardly, we imagine, dispute the conformity of a fable constructed according to such principles, with the grand character of Art. The system of versification adopted by the new school is, we think, no less so. It appears to be borrowed from the Spanish drama, which is, at present, prodigiously admired in Germany, and consists, like its prototype, indiscriminately, of short and long lines, of trochaics and iambics, of blank verse and rhyme, of couplets and every various kind of stanza, governed by no law, as far as our most diligent perquisitions have enabled us to judge, save the pleasure or convenience of the author. One point of regularity, however, is uniformly observed, to the best of our recollection-we have not the whole modern theatre of Germany at hand to refer to-and in that the pieces in question differ from Spanish plays. Although blank-verse and rhyme are yet more arbitrarily intermixed by German than by Spanish authors, iambics and trochaics, and

long and short lines, do not, in their works, supplant and succeed each other in an equally capricious arrangement. This partial regularity was, probably, deemed indispensable to the preservation of the high character of Art; and we incline to think it an improvement, although it must be owned that in tragedies written wholly in short trochaics, the ear becomes so completely weary of the unaccustomed measure, that a little variety might be felt as a relief.

The effect of this system, thus per fected in all its parts, far exceeds what could readily have been anticipated. The consciousness of a highly artificial design pervades the whole, and dwells so engrossingly upon the mind, as to leave the reader almost uninterested, certainly unaffected, amidst trains of incidents the most horrible, amidst situations of the deepest pathos, all conducted with real dramatic skill, and with powerful bursts of strong passion. Schiller condemned everything like illusion, everything tending to excite excessive emotion in the reader or spectator, as beneath the dignity of genius, and bearing more analogy to wax-work imitations of real life, than to Statuary the one of the sister arts to which he deemed Tragedy most akin. He would surely be satisfied in this respect with his disciples, much of whose success in tranquillizing our sympathies, however, we attribute to their versification, which partly distracts our attention by care for the placing of a distant rhyme, and anxiety to ascertain what is, and what is not, rhymed, and partly induces us to think those agonies must be very bearable, which never occasion the sufferer to neglect or forget the regular structure of the most complicated

stanza.

The first piece attempted, we believe, upon this perfected system, was Adolf Müllner's NEUN UND ZWANZIGSTE FEBRUAR, a complete exemplification of the new principle of tragedy. Upon one 29th of February, the father committed a heinous crime, and in punishment of his sin, upon every return of that fatal day, his children incur guilt, or suffer calamity. We cannot help remarking, en passant, that it was exceedingly lucky the first of fence was not perpetrated upon the oftener-recurring 28th. Werner, another living German dramatist, has

introduced us to a family, whose crimes and misfortunes were fated to the 24th of February, and who must necessarily have been, in a ratio of four to one, more guilty and more miserable than our friends the Horsts. Jacob Horst, the father of Walter, the hero of the piece, at a feast given by his father-in-law in compliment to him upon his birth-day, the 29th of February, saw, fell in love with, and seduced, his wife's younger sister, who died in giving birth to a daughter. This was bad enough, according to our notions, but it should rather seem that if the delinquent had meekly submitted to the punishment naturally consequent upon his flagitious conduct, his wife's anger, and the reprobation of his neighbours, those sufferings might have been deemed sufficient expiation. He sinned more deeply in striving to avert these inflictions. He contrived to bury the whole nefarious transaction in the deepest mystery, rearing the child of guilt in secret. When, afterwards, she and Walter met, they, as was to be expected, forthwith fell in love, and as the father assigned no satisfactory reason for his opposition to their attachment, set little store by it. Upon the 29th of February they married, and the old father died upon hearing the news. During the twelve years which have elapsed between this event and the opening of the drama, every 29th of February has been mark ed by affliction. The arrival of an uncle from America upon the fatal day, discovers the dreadful secret of the consanguinity of the wedded lovers. Walter's feelings are, with powerful talent, wrought up well nigh to frenzy, when, convincing himself that Death claims the offspring of compli cated guilt, that his offended father's shade must be propitiated by sacrifice, he stabs his only remaining child. This strange and horrible drama, limited to one act, is written in short trochaics, rhymed throughout, couplets and stanzas being, as usual, intermixed.

In Müllner's next work, DIE SCHULD, Guilt, the parental offence is so small, simply refusing alins to a gipsy, that we really cannot believe the sins and misfortunes of the sou, although denounced in consequence, to be inflicted for its chastisement; but must suppose that to have only produced le nœud de l'intrigue, whilst

the hero suffers, like other heroes of our acquaintance, the penalty of his own uncontrolled passions; though wemust observe here, as in DER NEUN UND ZWANZIGSTE FEBRUAR, and in DIE ALBANESERIN, the calamities are brought about by the precise means adopted to guard against them. The story of DIE SCHULD is, as our readers may recollect, that a Spanish lady, when near her second confinement, unluckily rejected the supplications of a gipsy; that the exasperated mendicant predicted that her unborn babe would murder her eldest son; that the superstitious and terrified mother gave the predestined murderer to a Swedish countess, who passed him upon her husband for their own son; that this suppositious Hugo, Count of Oerindur, immediately upon becoming his own master, visited his native country, Spain, and there, at a bullfight, saved the life of his unknown brother, Carlos, becoming in consequence his bosom friend; but unluckily fell in love, ere long, with Carlos's beautiful wife, Elvira, whose affections he speedily gained; that Don Carlos grew jealous; that Hugo, tempted by a favourable opportunity during a hunting party, shot his friend, who, when found, was supposed to have accidentally shot himself; and that Hugo afterwards married the widow, who, with her only child, ac companied him home to Oerindur.

All this, which precedes the opening of the tragedy, is naturally and happily developed in its progress. The piece consists merely of the arrival of Don Valeros, the father of the deceased Don Carlos, to visit his daughter-in-law and grandchild; the gradual awakening of his suspicions respecting Hugo's crime; the discovery of the fatal deed, as well as of the relationship of the parties; the feelings of all upon the occasion; and the final deaths of Hugo and Elvira by their own hands. This is well conducted, exciting and keeping up both curiosi ty and interest; and, what is more to our purpose, the whole exhibits the same high character of Art, the same inexorable Justice, as DER NEUN UND ZWANZIGSTE FEBRUAR. DIE SCHULD is written in short trochaic lines, rhymed and unrhymed.

KÖNIG YNGURD, King Yngurd, differs in many respects from the tragedies of which we have spoken. It is

written in iambics of the ordinary length, is rhymed throughout, although with the usual intermixture of couplets and stanzas; and, although still founded upon the principle of inexorable Justice, it presents us neither with progenitorial guilt, to be visited upon the heroes, nor with predicted calamities to be inflicted. We should naturally have called it an historical play, if the author had not informed us, in a sort of prefatory postscript, if we may use such an Irish form of speech, that the subject is entirely fictitious. Yngurd, it will be recollected, is a peasant, who, by dint of merit, having married the daughter of the late King of Norway, has succeeded to his father-in-law's throne, and is engaged, during the tragedy, in contending for its possession against Oscar, a posthumous son of his predecessor, by a wife espoused subsequently to his own nomination as successor. The character of Yngurd is ably conceived and painted. His consciousness of the superiority of his own abilities, his impatience of any interference by the states of the kingdom, with an authority which he exercises wisely and for the good of his subjects, but chooses to exercise arbitrarily, are happily contrasted with the painful sense of the responsible situation to which he is born, the diffidence of his own talents, and the willingness to relieve his conscience by yielding to the guidance of others, delineated in Alf, hereditary King of Denmark, the maternal uncle, and the guardian of Oscar. About the middle of the play, the character of the hero is wholly changed; or rather, perhaps we should say, the vices which his situation might produce, and those into which his good qualities might, if ungoverned and exaggerated, degenerate, acquire the preponderance over his virtues. In despair at the probable loss of a battle, Yngurd calls upon Satan for the assistance which Heaven refuses to his prayers, and from that instant becomes, apparently, the absolute property of his Infernal Majesty, who had by no means so performed his part of the contract, as to be entitled to payment, for the battle was actually gained at the moment of his invocation by the rash monarch. This seems to us inconsistent. Yngurd, as he is represented, would certainly have sold himself to the devil rather than have endured the mortification of de

feat, but the case must have been ir remediably desperate, his troops routed and dispersed beyond all possibility of being rallied, before his self-confidence would have looked abroad for succour. But to return to our more especial business. The consequences of the invocation are in perfect unison with the fearful doctrine of implacable Justice. Yngurd has sinned in wish, and must suffer. His self-reliance is lost; he becomes suspicious and tyrannical. His wife, Irma, too, had committed a fault. She had discovered that her young step-mother was in love with Yngurd, and had, through jealousy, calumniated her, disputing Oscar's legitimacy. She is punished with, and through her husband. Yngurd commands the murder of Oscar, whom he has taken prisoner, repents, and recalls the mandate; but too late. His only daughter, who was deeply enamoured of her youthful uncle, destroys herself; his wife, Irma, breaks her heart; and Yngurd himself is presently killed by his subjects in a tumultuary insurrection, leaving his crown, by what law of succession we know not, to King Alf.

DIE ALBANESERIN, the Albanese, like KÖNIG YNGURD, is written in iambics of the usual length, but intermingles blank verse with rhyme. In this piece, we have both a father's crime to punish, and predicted calamities to bring down upon the children. Basil, King of Sicily, had violated a law, which enacted that, if a King of Sicily having a son by a first marriage, should contract a second, he forfeited his crown, ipso facto, to his son, the regeney, in case of the minority of such son, becoming the right of the Duke of Camastro for the time being. Basil, having lost the mother of his eldest son, Fernando, married again, and became the father of Enrico, retaining his crown. The Duke of Camastro rebelled, and surprising the King, the young Queen was killed in the confusion. Basil afterwards defeating and taking the duke, ordered his instant execution, in revenge for his wife's death. It was then that Camastro breathed the fearful curse, upon which the play turns. He prayed that, as Basil struck his head bleeding to the earth, so he, Basil, might see a dearly beloved head set up bleeding on high; that as he, Camastro, was slain for a

woman, so, through one woman, Basil might lose both his sons. Basil, like Jacob Horst, and Donna Laura, instead of submitting to his fate, tried to avert it. Yet, really the means he employed were such as we could scarcely find in our hearts to dissuade any parent from adopting-he only laboured to increase to the utmost the natural affection subsisting between the brothers. In this he so fully succeeded, that they were always sacrificing their wishes and interests to each other. Fernando declared to some malcontents, that if Enrico desired to reign he would resign his crown to him; and Enrico, discovering that Fernando was in love with Albana, of whom he himself was violently enamoured, not only concealed his own passion, but laboured to make himself disagreeable to her, in order to transfer her incipient preference for himself to his brother. The further consequence of this excessive fraternal attachment is, that when Fernando falls in a battle with the Moors, and half the curse is apparently fulfilled by the exhibition of his head upon the mast of a Moorish vessel, Enrico, unable to support his double load of sorrows, goes mad. When the skill of the physician has restored the prince's senses, and, aided by the King's entreaties and reproaches, has wrung from both him and Albana confessions of the real state of their hearts, the unexpected re-appearance of Fernando cannot replace all in statu quo. Fernando, discovering that his happiness has been purchased at the expense of his brother's and wife's, takes poison to put himself out of the way, and enable them to marry; and Enrico, relapsing into insanity at the catastrophe, stabs himself. This is, in truth, Justice, nothing but Justice! But, in one very important point, DIE ALBANESERIN differs from the preceding pieces. In those the heroes contribute by their own faults to their misfortunes; whilst Fernando, Enrico, and Albana, really suffer by and through their virtues.

Grillparzer, Müllner's chief rival, has adopted the same principle in his AHNFRAU-a word which, we think, might best be Englished by Foremother-and has carried it even further, for there the sin is visited upon the third and fourth generation. The

naughtiness of the AHNFRAU having introduced a spurious heir into the noble family of Borotin, she cannot rest in her grave, until her crime be expiated, and its consequences remedied by the extinction of the intrusive line. This is finally effected in the play through a series of horrible calamities. The son of the count having been stolen in his infancy by a robber, is brought up in his supposed father's profession; falls in love, as unwittingingly as Edipus, with his sister; kills his father in a scuffle with the Bow street officers of Poland; and finally dies in the embrace of his ghostly AHNFRAU, whom he mistakes for Bertha. The old lady, when her penance is completed, by the disasters of her descendants, which, with truly disinterested maternal love, she had vainly endeavoured to prevent, ends the tragedy by going quietly home into her hitherto-untenanted monument. -DIE AHNFRAU is written in the same measure as DIE SCHULD.

It were needless further to accumulate examples. The principle upon which all these modern tragedies are founded, has been abundantly illustrated, and the high character of art, resulting from so systematic a construction of fable, may be readily conceived. Of the extraordinary effect thus wrought, in lending to the deep passions of tragedy much of the impassibility of temperament more habitually characterising statuary, no adequate idea can be formed, without reading the works in question at full length. Of the degree in which the versification contributes to this marvellous calmness, however, we may perhaps afford our readers some notion, by translating short portions of two or three scenes. We shall take the long iambic lines from Müllner's ALBANESERIN, and the short trochaic lines from the AHNFRAU of the more poetic Grillparzer, with whose genius they seem better to accord; although, perhaps, the very richness of his poe try tends to heighten their undramatic effect.

Benvolio, the physician, is remonstrating with Albana upon her injustice, in hating Enrico as her rival in the heart of her lost husband, when she abruptly interrupts him thus:

The Prince's state-They deem him here insane