M. Thiers, who writes on the authority of Vitrolles, whom he knew personally and whose unpublished Memoirs he had read, substantially confirms Buchon:

'There was only one man who could ensure the reception of an individual who should come in his name, that was M. de Talleyrand. But never would he have entrusted to anyone whatever a positive proof of his action against the established government; and he refused to send anything beyond sound advice which should be orally communicated to the sovereigns and the ministers of the coalition. M. d'Alberg, who did not spare himself when he could make a step towards his end, supplied what M. de Talleyrand left wanting. German by origin, he had been very intimate with M. de Stadion at Vienna: he furnished M. de Vitrolles with some tokens of recognition sufficient to convey the certitude that the bearer came from him.'

After a most interesting account of the events which immediately preceded the abdication at Fontainebleau, M. de Ségur exclaims:

'What can I add? Grand Army, Empire, Emperor,—there is an end of all of them. This genius which supported me has departed with Napoleon. Arrived at that fatal termination of so much greatness, I feel that my literary life is closed like our military life, that history is now wanting to the historian as war was then wanting to the warrior.'

His literary life was far from closed, and history was not wanting to the historian. He soon resumed his pen, and found materials for valuable additions to his reminiscences. But we are compelled to act like the genius which parted company with him when he parted company with his Emperor.

In giving more-more both new and true—about Napoleon, we have proceeded upon a conviction that we can hardly have too much. He fills so great a space in the history of the world, he exercised so extraordinary and so sustained an influence on the very framework of society, he wrought so many changes, he left his mark on so many institutions, civil, military and political, that the slightest trait or illustration of him has a value and an interest of its own; the more especially because men's minds are not yet definitively made up about him, are still wavering between the rival and conflicting estimates of M. Lanfrey and M. Thiers.

Our readers will judge for themselves, but we do not think

Emperor of Russia entered the room, and said he had reasons for advancing, and ordered the advance; the generals remonstrated, but the Emperor was determined. Woronzoff told Sydenham that that day a courier arrived at his outposts with_a letter for the Emperor in the handwriting of Talleyrand. This was told me by Frederick Ponsonby.'

that

that M. de Ségur's tribute to the memory of Napoleon will`essentially vary the sentence which the right-minded portion of posterity, the lovers of truth, justice and free government, must pass upon him. He is shown to have had winning manners when it suited him; to have yielded to kindly or generous impulses when they cost him neither power nor glory, in other words, nothing that he really cared about. But his capacity for self-sacrifice and magnanimity stopped there. His sensibility was little more than an exaggeration of that which led Sterne to weep over a dead donkey and neglect a dying mother; and his good qualities did more harm than good in the long run, by helping to gloss over the detestable nature of his policy, and by withdrawing attention from the crimes and vices, especially his insensibility to human suffering on a large scale, which have given him a bad pre-eminence amongst the worst scourges of our race. Any apotheosis of Napoleon must resemble that of Hoche (in Gillray's cartoon), who ascends to Heaven amidst emblems of cruelty and violence, from an Earth of burning towns, devastated plains, and battle-fields heaped with the dying and the dead. To invoke the image of the exile of St. Helena is to invoke along with it a succession of images, like the night scene in Richard III., when the ghost of victim after victim utters a malediction and passes on. As regards the portrait which M. de Ségur has placed before us, we are at first sight attracted and to a certain degree misled by it. But on a careful study, the features seem out of keeping with the gentler feelings: the expression repels sympathy: falsehood and treachery lurk beneath the smile; and the gaze becomes riveted on the cold, smooth, severe, inflexible brow, with the indelible stain of blood traced on it.

ART. VIII. Queen Mary. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. London, 1875.

A

S the true end of the drama is action, and no play can be a thoroughly good one which is not fitted for representation on the stage, it is but seldom that great plays are written where the stage is either in its decline, or where it has no genuine motive for existence. In any dramatic work of genius composed in such a period, it will almost invariably be found that action is subordinate to idea; the interest of the poem lies not so much in the imitation of nature by means of actors, as in the form which expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet himself.

There

There are, in fact, two distinct classes of dramas: those which are primarily meant to be acted, like the plays of Shakespeare and the Greek tragedians, and those which, like the works of Seneca and Guarini, are intended only to be read.

It can scarcely be disputed that the great days of the English stage have gone by. Perfected, like the theatre of Athens, when the nation itself was at the height of its greatness and activity, the era of our dramatic productiveness was as brief as it was glorious. The golden age of our theatre was, without doubt, the age of Elizabeth; yet, so long as the nation continued to occupy itself with arms as well as commerce, the traditions of the poetical drama never quite expired. The historical plays of Shakespeare, above all, retained their popularity on the stage till within comparatively recent days. A constant succession of great actors, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, Macready, did justice to their heroic style; and old playgoers still recall with enthusiasm the favourite parts of King John, Richard II., Richard III., and Wolsey.

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It was not till after power passed into the hands of the middle classes, at the time of the first Reform Bill, that the poetical drama received its death-blow. Then, as the interest in foreign affairs and public action declined before the allengrossing pursuit of wealth, a fresh set of anti-poetical motives came into play in the theatres. Since that period the old love of imaginative action has gradually given place to a taste for domestic or melodramatic incident; invention, character, passion, all the elements that constitute a great drama, have been sacrificed to the craving for scenic effect. Even the plays of Shakespeare himself have been adapted' to gratify the new taste. It was but lately, for instance, that we witnessed the revival of Antony and Cleopatra,' for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of exhibiting a magnificent show of ancient millinery. And if now and then a play has been acted which appeared to have been inspired by more elevated motives, the spectator has felt that the old and noble traditions of the stage have become obsolete. We remember a year or two ago witnessing a drama full of grand tableaux, and performed amid nightly rounds of applause, in which the actor represented the most unfortunate of English monarchs, lying on his back, and tossing about his children like a street tumbler, while the poet had introduced the Protector of England, the master of Blake, and the terror of Spain, cringing and craving for a title, like any grocer under Louis Philippe.

Nevertheless, with such a dearth of true dramatic motive in our theatres, most observers must have been struck with

the

the number of poems published in a dramatic form, and though evidently unsuitable for the stage, proving that the idea at least of action is still present in the minds of our poets. These compositions have now received an addition which cannot fail to excite great interest in the literary world. The Laureate himself has written a drama, and what is more, a historical one. Naturally enough his work has been received with every symptom of enthusiasm and delight. We are told that here at last is a poem full of true dramatic fire;' that the play is the most dramatic since the days of Shakespeare;' that it is the worthy sequel of the great series of dramas that 'were culminated and crowned with Henry V.' If this be so, none ought to welcome the event with more pleasure than ourselves. We have long protested against the effeminate and luxurious motives of modern poetry; a genuine revival of the drama would be real evidence of increased public spirit; while if 'Queen Mary' be in any way like the parallel suggested for it, nothing but great acting and proper appreciation is required to ensure its success on the stage.

The historical plays of Shakespeare are the most splendid monument of poetical patriotism that any country can boast. In them, as in a mirror, we see a representation of whatever is famous in the life of our nation, reaching back to distant periods, extending into modern days, starting from the great wars with France, covering the Wars of the Roses, proceeding to the dawn of the Reformation. Here are embalmed the great and generic names of English chivalry, the Pembrokes, the Salisburys, the Northumberlands: here are the life-like figures of our heroes, Henry V. and Talbot: here all those scenes of tragedy and pathos of which English history is so full; the fortunes of Constance and Arthur, and Katharine of Aragon; the captivity and death of Richard II.; the downfall of Wolsey. Here, too, are represented the humours and manners of the people themselves in the market, the inn, and the battle-field; manners not studied with an eye to antiquarian effect, but painted with a genial enjoyment of real life, as the old painters filled in their pictures of sacred subjects with the details of the life about them. Action, action, action, is the key-note of every play. The poet has not been simply inspired by a love of artistic form; nor does he group his incidents so as to express any central idea: he is content to follow the order of events; to imagine with ardour the motives of heroes, and to utter them in heroic words. This is Shakespeare's historical method: let us see whether Mr. Tennyson's resembles it as closely as his critics declare.

And first as to the subject. Queen Mary. Not Mary, Queen

of

of Scots, the subject of ballad and romance, but Mary of England Bloody Mary. The nation has passed its judgment on this Queen in the epithet attaching to her name, and the verdict has been thus expanded by a great, if not a picturesque, historian:

It is not necessary to employ many words in drawing the character of this Princess. She possessed few qualities, either estimable or amiable, and her person was as little engaging as her behaviour and address. Obstinacy, bigotry, violence, cruelty, malignity, revenge, tyranny, every circumstance of her character took a tincture from her bad temper and narrow understanding. And amidst that complication of vices which entered into her composition, we shall scarcely find any virtue but that of sincerity, which she seems to have maintained throughout her whole life, except in the beginning of her reign, when the necessity of her affairs obliged her to make some promises to the Protestants which she never intended to perform. She appears also, as well as her father, to have been susceptible of some attachments of friendship, and that without the caprice or inconsistency which were so remarkable in the conduct of that monarch. To which we may add, that in many circumstances of her life she gave indications of resolution and vigour of mind which seems to have been inherent in her family.'

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The judgment of Hume, which is scarcely likely to be reversed by the industry of later historians in collecting facts, or their picturesque sensibility' in interpreting them, does not promise a character suited to the heroine of a romantic drama. Nevertheless Shakespeare, who found materials for a play in King John, might possibly have also found them in Queen Mary. Had he done so, we may be quite sure that he would have concentrated all his interest on the salient points of action in the reign, and on the characters engaged in it, the revolt of Northumberland, the execution of Lady Jane Grey, the rising of Wyatt, the absolution of Pole, the death of Cranmer, and the loss of Calais. The Queen herself would certainly only have appeared in so far as she was mixed up with public affairs. A brief analysis of Mr. Tennyson's play will show how far he has built on the Shakespearian lines.

The first act represents the eagerness of Mary for her marriage with Philip, both for personal reasons and on account of her zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. In the first scene the citizens, watching the progress of Mary on her accession, comment on the State changes the reign is likely to produce. In the second, Cranmer is sent to the Tower. Then we are introduced to a crowd listening to the Catholic preacher, Father Bourne, stirred up to a riot by the arts of Noailles, the French Ambassador, quieted by the influence of Courtenay, one of the popular pre

and

tenders