The "Night-Piece to the Genius of Shakespeare," &c. &c. &c. we shall draw forth as occasion requires. To show the author we are in earnest, we here insert the little poem entitled "HENRY KIRKE WHITE." "Poor Henry! and is this thy early tomb? And fear'd the too-bright sun might break his rest! There may such soothing dread connexion be- The papers sent us from Oxford having fallen aside, we have not, since their discovery, found leisure to inspect them, which, as they are somewhat voluminous, will prove no trifling task. The author shall receive all manner of justice at our hands. The wicked satirical lines on the "Guardian Newspaper" are so dreadfully pungent and personal, that, notwithstanding the uncommon talent they display, we dare not venture to publish them. The only wonder to us is, that an author of so much genius and learning should have wasted his time on so barren a subject. His article on the Sunday Papers is less exceptionable, though also full of bitter words. We shall use it as we see cause. We shall certainly insert, in our May Number, the Review of Wilson's Poems. We have received two reviews of these poems. The last, which we cannot describe by any signature, is totally unfit for insertion in the EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, and will, if desired, be returned to its author. Notwithstanding our aversion to Scottish poems, the "Address to Mary” will probably find a place in our next, or at least in an early Number. A review of Mr Maclaren's valuable and ingenious work on "The Plain of Troy" is in course of preparation for our next Number. We at one time intended to have prepared a notice of this very original production for the present month; but taking into view the complexity of the subject, the multiplicity of the details, and the number of theories to be discussed and rejected, in whole or in part, we were satisfied that such a proceeding would neither have been just to Mr Maclaren nor to ourselves. In the meantime, we would earnestly recommend this piece of close, vigorous reasoning, to the careful perusal of such of our readers as have been charmed with “the tale of Troy divine," or feel any interest in disquisitions connected with classical subjects. The present Editor never received the second part of the Review of “Foster on Popular Ignorance." It is now too late to resume the subject. We beg to assure B., that the absurd report to which he alludes, in his letter just received, is as false as it is unworthy of serious notice. That it should have been be lieved by any human being, B. only excepted, is to us wonderful. In reference to the part of B.'s letter which more immediately concerns ourselves, we recommend it to him to mind his own affairs, and suffer us to manage our matters as we best may. Let none of our Correspondents, whom we have omitted to mention, fancy themselves neglected. They have cast their bread on the waters, and they will find it after many days. We are hurried sometimes, but we always get matters to go right at the long-run. In the meantime, our numerous friends and contributors, known to us only as such, will deign to receive the expression of our high consideration. Past services demand our gratitude; while, to the future we look forward with encreasing confidence and expectation. We are sometimes, to be sure, a little "encumbered with help," but we take it all kindly, and would not quarrel with what is meant to raise us to honour and renown. The Correspondents of the EDINBURGH MAGAZINE and LITERARY MISCELLANY are respectfully requested to transmit their Communications for the Editor to ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & COMPANY, Edinburgh, or to LONGMAN and COMPANY, London; to whom also orders for the Work should be particularly addressed. Printed by J. Hutheen & Sons. THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY MISCELLANY. APRIL 1822. CATILINE; A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ROBINSON AND CO. 1822. Ir, as has been alleged, the present age, so fertile in works of imagination, be remarkable for the decline, or rather, perhaps, the extinction of dramatic talent, it cannot be disputed that the attempts, in this difficult species of composition, have been neither few, nor proceeded from writers of plebeian genius or reputation. Had Lord Byron never written any thing besides the Giaour, Childe Harold, the Corsair, or the Siege of Corinth, who would not have been prompt to maintain, that the highest honours of the Tragic Muse were within his reach, and that he had only to stretch out his hand to receive the laurel crown? But experience has proved, that this, like many of those rash judgments in anticipation, which men are so apt to form when their imaginations catch fire from the scintillations of genius, would have been as erroneous as premature. Who now reads the Doge of Venice, or will you find a man in a million who, though proffered the laurel and the sack as his reward, could repeat a single line of its ponderous dullness, and prosing declamation? Is not the Two Foscari already consigned to literary inhumation? And are not even the impieties of Cain become harmless-because they are forgotten? Surely, this is VOL, X. passing strange, and merits a careful and cautious investigation. Without entering into this curious field of enquiry, and without pretending to produce any thing in the shape of an explication of this phenomenon, we may, however, be permitstriking anomaly appears to us to lie, ted to observe, that the cause of this not so much in the declension of the genius for dramatic composition, as in the state of the public taste, which seems to have been radically and incurably vitiated. Horace has deli vered this maxim : Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces. Now, we may be in error, and therefore we would be understood to express ourselves with great diffidence; but it does appear to us, that the admirable maxim just quoted is not only wholly neglected by our modern poets who have attempted tragedy, but utterly contemned and despised by them. The truth seems to be, that they have all become infect→ ed with what has been called the "philosophical spirit of the age," and instead of describing, which is their legitimate province, they analyse and expound. In their anxiety to pene◄ trate into the very inmost recesses of mind, they have neglected Nature, and turned Metaphysicians; they have ceased respicere exem plar vite morumque-have plunged headlong into the obscure, the mystical, the horrid, or the fanaticaland been guilty of the same sins in 3 G poetry as the Cartesian in philosophy, who, instead of observing Nature, and tracing her laws, invented his Vortices, and then commenced torturing Nature to support and countenance his invention. In the works of no modern poets do we recognise those condensed and energetic moral truths that find an echo in every bosom ; or those traits of character, which, by the powerful relief and individuality that belongs to them, take firm hold of our minds,-amalgamate with the general mass of our knowledge,--identify themselves with the legitimate furniture of our imaginations, and become the frequent and spontaneous objects of our reminiscenses and delights. On the contrary, we meet only with shreds and patches of humanity-with a severed limb, a bloodless vein, or a ruptured artery, instead of the whole form in life, and health, and motion; we are introduced into the dissecting room, instead of the painter's or the sculptor's study, and leave it with weariness and disgust, instead of having our imaginations excited by the beau ideal of beauty, and symmetry, and grace. Our modern poets seem never to have studied man but in the closet, with Malebranche, Locke, or Condillac for their guides; and hence they may analyse a passion like Le Brun; but they cannot group a scene, or exhibit man in situations where his passions are necessarily elicited, and where his actions form the best in dex to his feelings and emotions. Like the first Christian converts, our poets are spoiled through "vain philosophy;" and were it possible to spread a film over their intellectual eye, that they might, for a season at least, be blind to what has been so ostentatiously held forth as the "Philosophy of Mind," we entertain no manner of doubt that another Shakespeare might yet arise, to form the cherished glory of this age, and the wonder and delight of those that follow! When we heard of the subject of Mr Croly's Tragedy, we were, on our general principles, prepared to expect another signal failure,-and it gives us no sort of pleasure to state that our unfavourable anticipations have been but too completely verified. Mr Croly has been highly un fortunate in the choice of a subject. wake of Crebillon, Voltaire, and Ben He has necessarily followed in the Jonson, the last of whom in particular, with all the faults that may be detected in his "Catiline," and they are neither few nor small, has left him nothing almost to do but facts in Catiline's history are so unito borrow with dexterity; while the versally notorious, that to follow the truth of history would be injurious in point of effect; and to sacrifice it, as Mr Croly has done, must shock every one in the least acquainted with the most interesting portion of Roman History. In this situation, Mr Croly had only to encounter a choice of difficulties; and we must do him the justice to say, that he has chosen the least. To have followed he would have been brought into inthe literal history, like Ben Jonson, evitable contrast with that great and original writer, inferior, as Mr Croly justly observes, to Shakespeare only and, what is, if possible, still worse, as a poet, and to Milton as a scholar; he could not have cherished the most distant hope of success, where so celebrated Discarding, therefore, in Я writer had failed. measure, the account of Sallust, in a great which, to use his own bombastical phrase, into a vast, embodied Iniquity," he "Catiline starts up at once ed portraiture of Cicero, whom, by turns to the somewhat more softenthe bye, he mistranslates, to help himself out of the difficulty a little and concludes by informing us, that "the following pages look upon gested by Cicero; that of a man of Catiline in the point of view sug * The passage alluded to is as follows: "Habuit enim ille, sicuti meminisse vos arbitror, permulta maximarum, non expressa signa, sed adumbrata virtutum. Utebatur hominibus improbis multis: et quidem optimis se viris deditum esse si mulabat. Erant apud illum illecebræ libidinum multæ erant etiam industriæ vitia libidinis apud illum: vigebant etiam quidam stimuli ac laboris. Flagrabant studia rei militaris. neque ego unquam fuisse tale monstrum în terris ullum puto, tam ex contrariis diversis inter se pugnanconflatum. tibus naturæ studiis cupiditatibusque, tempore jucundior? quis turpioribus conQuis clarioribus quodam junctior? quis civis meliorum partium |