play is a combination of thought and action, and not a vehicle of description. The march should be in deeds, not words: we should see the procession and not hear it described. The skeleton of a great play is the ballet; no better test can be brought than to see how it will dance. If a play has legs it can run alone, and there is little fear for the result. As a proof let us select Shakspere's plays, and we shall be convinced how perfectly each piece resolves itself into a ballet. A tragedy differs from it merely in this particular, that music accompanies the one and words the other: the first excites or soothes through an appeal to the senses, while the other does it through the understanding.

The first appeals to the lowest faculty, the second to the highest we must not forget, however, that the drama demands stage representation: that the right estimation is only attained through that medium: this no doubt is the reason for the indifference of the public to the unacted drama. It requires a combination of great excellence to understand and carry out in the perusal a fine play the student must first possess an imagination, second only to the poet himself, to dispense with the outward and visible signs, which render Shakspere so popular with the masses.

How few care about the finest unacted plays: we have heard many men of great powers of mind declare that the demand upon the attention was too strong, the mind had several offices to perform : first to realise the characters as shadowed by the poet; secondly, to put them into action in the mind's eye; and thirdly to observe the coherency or sympathy between their idiosyncrasy and their language.

How much a tragedy of five acts contains! It is a little world of itself a family of originalities-a gathering together into the perfect shape of the tangled threads of life; there act, side by side, power and weakness, virtue and vice, pride and humility, folly and intellect, yet all must be so harmoniously disposed as to look a

complete work of art. It must be a piece of music, so artistically arranged as to give but one melody; the different characters must sound differently, yet together. Mr. Coleridge once said, as the light which consists of many colors has but one result, so should a fine work of art, be it in painting, poetry or sculpture, produce one effect, although consisting of several agents or constituent parts. In every point of view, the dramatist is the revealer of passion through genius:-we act, suffer, or rejoice as the ideal personages did, their experience is made ours, and from the graves of the past their departed spirits pass into our minds to renew some passage in their own existence.

Coleridge used often to quote the dictum of Plato, which he said contained the anticipative shadow of Shakspere. "It is the business of one and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet ought at the same time to contain within himself the power of comedy."

That there are many plays besides those of Shakspere, which contain tragic and comic scenes, is undoubtedly true, but they almost invariably seem like a comedy and tragedy mixed together, not a great play where the two naturally harmonise and blend into one work.

That comedy is the relief of a tragedy, is nearer the truth than to say one is independent of the other, or that they are separated by the broad line of demarcation drawn by the difference of nature. It is one nature in its two grand moods.

There are several descriptions of drama:-first, there is the mixed play with its comic underplot relieving the superstructure of lofty passion and tragic result; then the poetical drama either romantic or supernatural; a third class is the historical play; the fourth class is the purely comic piece, either poetical or prose.

Sir Bulwer Lytton has invented a kind of fifth order, which is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl; this consists of a melo-dramatic sketch

filled up with elaborated dialogues and abounding in poetical conceits and inflated sentiments. The most successful instance of this kind is, "The Lady of Lyons." There are many reasons why that play should be popular: it appeals only to the outer and ad captandum range.

Another great element in the success of Bulwer is the felicitous manner in which he tricks out a common-place sentiment, and hangs a glittering sound about it, which deceives the masses into the belief of its being poetry; the tinsel is so well laid on that at a little distance it has really the look of pure gold; it deceived the critics at first; what wonder then, if the crowd were deluded; but a sure test of poetry is this: if you can read it time after time, and derive fresh delight from every perusal, you may be sure it is poetry; if on a second or third time it stales, the conclusion is certain that it is only verse, however sprightly or sounding. There is, however, one exception to this in the writings of Pope. Although deficient in what we call "Genius," there is a wonderful pleasure derived from the reperusal of his works. This springs from the point, finish, and wit which sparkle in every line he has written. Pope and "Hudibras" abound in significant couplets; they are full of epigrams. Pope might almost be called the Poet of Epigrams. Now, although Bulwer in his New Timon has imitated the suavity of Pope's metre, he has entirely missed the condensed meaning and brilliant sarcasm. Singular as it may appear, the old secluded man has a far profounder knowledge of fashionable life than the courtly author of "Money," notwithstanding he is one of the "kaut ton,” and an elegant baronet. Pope's knowledge of fashionable life is deeper than the other's; it goes into the whole nature of man, modified by dandyism, and all the disturbing elements of dissipated life. Bulwer forgets the man, and paints only the conventional phase of high breeding.

This is even more apparent in his dramas than in his other

writings; but even in his chief productions, “Pelham" and the best of his novels, the predominant idea is the artificial and not the natural. The man is entirely lost in the modification; it is in this that Dickens shines so far superior to most of his contemporary novelists; nature is paramount in all his works, with the now and then exceptions of that class of characters where the author of Pickwick is allowed even by his greatest admirers to fail. Bulwer also fails in the impression that's left on the reader's mind; although infinitely superior to Dickens in the faculty of constructiveness, he yet falls short of giving that conviction; we know that it can be mathematically demonstrated, but there the matter ends: and as Hudibras says,

"A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still."

The predominant power, therefore, in Bulwer's works, is art in its artificial sense; falling short of that art which obliterates the marks of its existence, he displays the carpentery of his trade. The garment is not one piece so admirably woven that it produces the idea of unity; but it is several pieces sewn together, and the stitches and joinings are visible. On the other hand, Sheridan Knowles is, to a great extent, a play wright, and not a dramatist, yet he has little art in its artistic sense. When art gives a grace to nature it has done its work.

"Music resembles poetry-in each

Are nameless graces, which no art can teach,
And which a master's hand alone can reach."

That is very true so far as it goes; no art can endow with genius, but the artistic sense of beauty enables genius to achieve its highest triumphs. Skill would never have enabled Raphael to produce his masterpieces without genius, while all his genius would have been lost had he lacked the Divine workman's power of rendering it intelligible to the world.

The difference between nature and artifice, (we use this word to distinguish it from art,) is too apparent to need any elaborate exposition. A short specimen from Bulwer will suffice.

"Melnotte.-Nay, dearest, nay, if thou wouldst have me paint
The home to which could love fulfil its prayers,

This hand would lead thee, listen! A deep vale
Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
Near a clear lake, margined by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles; glassing softest skies
As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows,
As I would have thy fate!

Pauline. My own dear love!

Melnotte.-A palace lifting to eternal summer
Its marble walls, from out a glossy bower
Of coolest foliage, musical with birds,

Whose songs should syllable thy name! At noon
We sit beneath the arching vines, and wonder
Why earth could be unhappy, while the Heavens
Still left us youth and love! We'd have no friends
That were not lovers; no ambition, save

To excel them all in love; we'd read no books
That were not tales of love-that we might smile
To think how poorly eloquence of words

Translates the poetry of hearts like ours!

And when night came, amidst the breathless Heavens
We'd guess what star should be our home when love
Becomes immortal; while the perfumed light

Stole through the mists of alabaster lamps,

And every air was heavy with the sighs
Of orange groves and music from sweet lutes,

And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth

I' the midst of roses!-Dost thou like the picture?
Pauline.-Oh! as the bee upon the flower, I hang
Upon the honey of thy eloquent tongue!

Am I not blest? And if I love too wildly,
Who would not love thee, like Pauline?

Melnotte. (bitterly.)—Oh, false one!
It is the prince thou lovest, not the man;
If in the stead of luxury, pomp, and power,
I had painted poverty, and toil, and care.