We have not thought it necessary to include Robert Bell in our list of acted dramatists, as his comedies make no pretension beyond a collection of artificial dialogues, which we venture to add, were never spoken by real men and women. Still they had a temporary success, owing to the vivacity of the acting. He has also reason to complain of that immaculate lessee and manager, Mr. Bunn, of world-wide celebrity. Aside from his dramatic writings Mr. Bell is a man of fine taste, an acute critic, a writer of elegant verses, and a good biographer.

Mr. Bell had an agreement with the famous lessee of Drury Lane to produce one of his plays, we forget which-the author was to have the net proceeds of the third, sixth and twelfth nights. The first performance went off with tolerable eclat. To the great astonishment of the author, the play then disappeared from the bills altogether, and on his remonstrating with the wily manager he was coolly told that he had performed his contract with Mr. Bell to the exact letter he had produced the comedy, and there was no proviso as to how often it was to be acted.

Mr. Bell's legal adviser agreed that he had no remedy: the result was that Mr. Bell cannot now even have his own play acted without Mr. Bunn's consent, while he himself has no power to make the manager perform it. It is supposed this is a retort for some unfavorable criticism which formerly appeared in the "Atlas" when under the direction of Mr. Bell.

We shall conclude our article on the modern dramatists by recording the answer of a facetious friend of ours, who, when asked to define a modern dramatist, replied;-" He is a man who, feeling himself very miserable, does his best to make his fellow-creatures equally so, by writing a play."

MRS. JAMESON..

No work purporting to give an account of the British Living Authors would be complete without Mrs. Jameson. This lady is something more than a name in English Literature—she is an influence-an influence, too, of the best and most lasting kind, an humanising influence. This character is always slow in gathering round it a halo sufficiently bright to make it stand out on the walls of time; but it has a warmth and a geniality that suffuses itself widely, and softens all it warms. Mrs. Jameson has done for Art what Leigh Hunt has done for Literature—she has been its exp?nent. And as this she has done her duty bravely and well. She seems to have felt it to be her mission, and her mission it has become. We do not pretend to any chronological accuracy when we say the greater part of her life has been devoted to this aim. Accident made her an author, she says, and having once taken up the pen, she wields it to this day. Her works are many and various, and they all, more or less, bear upon art. They are as follows:

Memoirs of Female Sovereigns, &c.-Diary of an Ennuyee.-Characteristics of Women.-Sketches at Home and Abroad.-Memoirs and Essays on various Subjects.-Hand-Book to Public Picture.-Galleries in and near London.—History of the Early Italian Painters.-Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art.-Loves of the Poets.-Social life in Germany.-Beauties of the Court of Charles II.-Companion to Private Picture Galleries.

She thus expounds some of her aims: "It is not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and examples of the kindly and generous affections-to show how the human soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering-to prove how much of possible good may exist in things evil and pervertedhow much hope there is for those who despair-how much comfort for those whom a heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and to put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and leveling spirit of the day."

This aim, as noble as it is high, she has successfully worked out in many of her works. In her "Characteristics of Women," in her "Lives of the Old Painters," in her "Legends of Christian Art." In the latter, her pencil, or graver, has assisted her in her design; and she has shown her appreciation of, by her excellence, at least one branch of art.

Mrs. Jameson is perhaps best known by her " Characteristics of Women," a work, we are sorry to say, now inaccessible to the youth of England, being there entirely out of print. And here we cannot help regretting that a work like this should ever be out of the market—that any moment of time should be, when a good book like this should be unattainable. And we hope that if ever these sheets meet her eye, she will take our advice, and forthwith hand a copy over to Mr. Knight, or Messrs. Chambers, and get them to produce an edition at a price within the reach of every working

man.

The authors of England, in future, if they wish their views to be understood by their own generation; if they have the welfare of those who live about them at heart, must produce their works so as to be accessible to every working man. The reason why a writer like Eugene Sue, or Dumas, is so popular, is because any of their works may be had for a shilling or two, and not because

they are liked better than such an author as Mrs. Jameson. Publishers have began to see this, and they will yet see it to an extent they never yet dreamed of. Authors, we believe, will profit by the low-priced system more than the high one. Publishers can always print a handsomer edition for the rich folks who like grand libraries; but let not the poor be starved while the rich are fed. Who knows what thoughts are shut out from the poor man or the poor woman, that might have had a beneficial influence upon their lives, by a high price! It is true that now a Bible may be bought for a shilling, and that Shakspere may be had for a half crown; but who can tell what progress we might have made had it always have been so! To authors, we say-if you think your thought is good, that it will benefit your fellow-creatures, publish it at such a price as all may command it. Never fear the result. Nay, we are so far Utopian, as to believe that if it were possible to distribute thought in the form of literature, gratis, it would pay in its results, better than the trade which is now made Literature has become a necessary of life; there is a wider acknowledgment that people have souls as well as bodies, and that each must be fed-that each must have its proper nourishment. Let not then the food for the mind be so costly as to put it out of the power of three-fourths of the nations to partake of it!-A light tax pays for water, one of the elements necessary to our bodily existence. A light tax pays for our communication one with another (at least in England and in America we hope to see the penny postage system adopted)—and why should not a light tax pay for the thought which is written and spoken, and which is so equally necessary!

of it.

Mrs. Jameson's "Characteristics of Women," should be in the hands of every one who possesses the works of our immortal bard; it is provocative of thought, and helps the reader to understand

Shakspere better than he otherwise would do, by his own unassisted study. We might say it is one of the best commentaries that we know-better than Schlegel-a complement to Hazlitt, though sometimes holding views antagonistic to his. Yet in the main, they agree very well—better than Ulrici, who is very wordy, and wishes to tie the poet down to his theory, on all sides. A companion to Coleridge, but more sustained than the poet-critic, and infinitely superior to every other expositor except Goethe, whose analysis of Hamlet in the Wilhelm Meister is worthy of his fame. The secret of this excellence of Mrs. Jameson's book we take to be the fact, that it is a woman—a very woman, who undertakes the task-none so well able as those to approve or condemn, as one who, being of a like nature, has in herself had the same feelings excited in her own heart during her life—who as lover, wife, mother and friend, has in turn acted on all these parts in real history, and has not gone to other commentators for her criticism.

Another work of Mrs. Jameson's, "The Loves of the Poets," deserves as high praise, and is valuable for the same excellence, for the same reason. We have not the volumes by us, (for this book, too, is out of print in both countries,) but we well recollect reading it with the greatest pleasure.

The course of true love never yet ran smooth, and the “Loves of the Poets" is a perpetual commentary on this line. We recollect only a few of the instances, but these will suggest others. Petrarch and Laura-Dante and Beatrice-Tasso and the PrincessSwift and Stella-Burns and his loves, for he had many-but chiefest his Mary and Clorinda; these, too, are matters of fact-Romances of Real Life, and naturally enough when a true woman has aught to say on such a subject, all the world listens with interest. We don't know any work we would put in a lady's hand instead of the trashy fictions that now abound, sooner than one of these books of Mrs. Jameson's.