He has chosen an excellent form for his poetry. Of all the shapes which genius loves, the most vivid and potential is the tragic drama. It marches along, with all the passions in its train. It disdains remote and lingering description. It is no maker of pictures of the past, however splendid and spirited; it makes the past live; it gives action and mind to the dead; its whole intercourse is with actual being, in its highest state of animation and impulse. Like the epic, it is a habitual wanderer among the monuments of the mighty dead; but it is of a higher function and nature, it is not satisfied with the memories of kings and heroes, it commands their presence in their attributes of passion and power, "in their armour as they lived." It peoples the sepulchre; and the slumber once scattered by its voice returns no more.

Next in force and vividness to the true tragic drama is the dramatic poem. By the introduction of the characters, speaking for themselves, the long circumlocutions and dreary explanations of the author are escaped. The scene is transferred with the rapidity of the stage. The quick contrast of character, the rapid interchange of dialogue, the dexterous complication of adventure, that make the charm of the theatre, are in their degree compassed. The dramatic poem wants the severe compactness of the drama; and what it gains in facility, it loses tenfold in interest by the loss of vigour. But it still holds the nearest rank; and until we shall see the brilliant phenomenon of a great tragic play arise, to shine over the darkness of our national stage, we shall receive, with no reluctant homage, its harbinger in the dramatic poem.'

Mr. Milman's work is founded on the well-known period of our history, when the unfortunate Anne Boleyn was sacrificed to the brutal and capricious license of Henry. The poem commences with a dialogue between Mark Smeaton and his sister Magdalene, a nun, who had been driven from one of the sequestrated establishMark has been educated abroad, and become a skilful player on the lute. His sister asks him for one of the strains which they sing in the royal chapel. He replies in the following pretty lines:

ments.

· Mark.

Dearest, yes, I'll bring

All these, and hymns forbidden there; there's one

Was taught me by a simple fisher-boy,

That sail'd the azure tide of that bright bay

That laves the walls of Naples: as he sung

What time the midnight waves were starr'd with barks,

Each with its single glowworm lamp, that tipt

The waters round with rippling lines of light

You would have thought Heaven's queen had strew'd around
Silence, like that among the stars, when pause

The angels in ecstatic adoration.

'Magdalene. Speak on, speak on! Were it a stranger's voice That thus discoursed, I could lose days in listening;

But thine

'Mark

Oh! Magdalene, thou know'st not here

In our chill, damp, and heavy atmosphere,

The power, might, magic, mystery of sweet sounds!
Oh! on some rock to sit, the twilight winds
Breathing all odour by at intervals

To hear the hymnings of some virgin choir,
With pauses musical as music's self,

Come swelling up from deep and unseen distance:
Or under some vast dome, like heaven's blue cope,
All full and living with the liquid deluge

Of harmony, till pillars, walls, and aisles,
The altar-paintings and cold images,

Catch life and motion, and the weight of feeling
Lies like a load upon the breathless bosom !'

pp. 6-8. Magdalene, zealous for her faith, is alarmed for the steadiness of her brother's, exposed as he is to the captivations of the court, and, above all, to that heretical and wicked queen.' But the advice seems to have come too late, for the boy, though unchanged in his belief, is already enamoured of Anne, whose habits of life he thus describes :

Is of the wretched, destitute, forlorn:
The usher to that court is Beggary,

'Her audience

And Want the chamberlain : her flatterers, those
Whose eloquence is full and bursting hearts;

Her parasites, wan troops of starving men

Round the full furnish'd board - pale dowerless maids

Nuns, like thyself, cast forth from their chaste cloisters
To meet the bitter usage of the world;

While holiest men are ever in her presence:

Nor can their lavish charity exhaust

The treasures of her goodness.'

pp. 10, 11.

The chief agent of the piece now appears, the Jesuit Angelo; on whom the poet has lavished no slight portion of sombre colouring. The following passage is extravagant beyond all bounds:

'But thou

That art a part of God's dread majesty,
In whose dusk robe his own disastrous purposes
Th' Almighty veils, twin-born with Destiny,
Inexorable Secrecy! come, cowl

This soul in deep impervious blackness! Grant
I may deny myself the pride and fame
Of bringing back this loose apostate land
To the true Faith. Be all mine agency
Secret as are the springs of living fire
In the world's centre, bury deep my name,
That mortal eye ne'er read it, till emblazed
Amid the roll of Christ's great saints and martyrs
It shake away the oblivious gloom of ages.'

P. 14.

He takes Mark Smeaton to task relative to the Queen's favourites, and suggests that he may be in the road to favour. It is to be observed, in the Jesuit's whole character, that he is declared to be sincere, that the violences or artifices which he uses are in obedience to that strong enthusiasm, whose purpose is to do Heaven service, and which, in more than religious matters, so easily overlooks the crime of the means in the profound value of the object. But in the wish to make the character forcible, Mr. Milman has, unwittingly and injudiciously, made it all but diabolical.

That warning was a master-stroke: it brings
The impossible within the scope of thought;
We do forbid but what may come to pass;
And he will brood on it, because forbidden,
Till his whole soul is madness. All the rest
Are full of their proud honour, and disdain
To torture with vain villanous misconstruction
Each innocent phrase to looseness. Cursed woman!

'Gainst whom remorselessness is loftiest duty,

And mercy sin beyond Heaven's grace think'st thou
To be a Queen, and dare to be a woman!

Play fool upon thy dizzy precipice,

Nor smile, nor word, nor look, nor thought but's noted
In our dark registers; each playful jest

Is chronicled, and we are rich in all

That's ocular proof and circumstance of guilt

To jealousy's distemper'd ear.

And thou,

Proud King! the church's head! each lustful thought,
Each murtherous deed, is a new link of the chain

By which our slaves are trammell'd: we'll let slip
Thy own fierce passions, ruthless as the dogs
Of war, to prey on thy obdurate heart;

And they shall drag thee down, base, suppliant,
Beneath our feet or drive thee maddening on,
An hideous monster of all guilt, to fright
The world from its apostasy, and brand
The heretic cause with thy eternal shame.'

pp. 19, 20.

The scene next brings forward the Queen, Lord Rochford, and Mark Smeaton, who is introduced for the singular purpose of singing "The Protestant's Hymn to the Virgin," a trial of strength as well as of skill, for it occupies no less than eight pages !

Angelo and Bishop Gardiner are now in close council. Gardiner is reluctant to acknowledge the extent of his views; but Angelo urges and inflames him, until his tardiness gives way. The Bishop makes some passing remark on the superiority to which a man of the Jesuit's powers might be presumed to attain. The remark is suddenly answered by Angelo's disclaimer of all worldly views. We give this passage entire, as one of the best in the volume.

Oh! fear not,
Nor jealously mistrust me, lest I cross

Thy upward path: I have forsworn the world,
Not with the formal oaths that burst like flax,
But those that chain the soul with triple iron.
Earth hath no guerdon I may covet, none
I may enjoy. Thou, Stephen Gardiner,
Shalt rule submissive prelates, peers, and kings,
Loftiest in station, as in mind the mightiest;
And a perpetual noon of golden power
Shall blaze around thy lordly mitred state.
I'm girt for other journeys: at that hour,
When all but crown'd the righteous work, this isle
Half bow'd again to the Holy See, I go

Far in some savage land unknown, remote
From civilized or reasonable life,

From letters, arts - where wild men howl around
Their blood-stain'd altars

to uplift th' unknown,

Unawful crucifix: I go to pine

With famine; waste with slow disease; the loathing
And scorn of men. And when thy race is run,
Thou, Winchester, in marbled cemetery,

Where thy cathedral roof, like some rich grove,
Spreads o'er, and all the wall with 'scutcheons blaze,
Shalt lie. While anthem'd choirs and pealing organs,
And incense clouds, and a bright heaven of lamps,
Shall solemnize thy gorgeous obsequies;
O'er my unsepulchred and houseless bones,
Cast on the barren beach of the salt sea,
Or arid desert, where the vulture flaps

Her dreary wings, shall never wandering priest
Or bid his beads or say one passing pray'r.

Thy memory shall live in this land's records

While the sea girds the isle; but mine shall perish
As utterly as some base beggar's child

That unbaptiz'd drops like abortive fruit

Into unhallow'd grave.'

pp. 49-51.

Anne has at length had evidence of the King's desertion of her for Jane Seymour.

I saw it

'Twas no foul vision — with unblinded eyes

I saw it: his fond hands, as once in mine,

Were wreath'd in hers: he gazed upon her face
Even with those sorcerous eyes, no woman looks at

nor madly dote.

That eloquence, the self-same burning words
That seize the awe-struck soul, when weakest, thrill'd
Her vainly-deaf averted ears.'

p. 56.

All this is injudicious: it is, at best, the language of a romantic girl. But what are we to think of the sorcerous eyes and irresistible tenderness of that old, brawling ruffian, Henry? The nor madly dote we may attribute, at our pleasure, either to the Queen's conviction of her being in possession of her senses, or to the fascination of the King. This idle exuberance flows on.

But thou,

Oh! thou, my crime, my madness! thou on whom

The loftiest woman had been proud to dote,
Had he been master of a straw-roof'd cottage!"

P. 56.

Such is the formidable inconvenience of founding a poem on a transaction of authentic history.

• This he

That lay whole hours before my worshipp'd feet,

Making the air melodious with his words?
So fearful to offend, having offended
So fearful of his pardon, not myself
More jealous of my maiden modesty.'

p. 66.

Who can recognise the licentious and brutal King in the sighing swain of this pastoral picture?

The plot now advances to the subornation of Mark Smeaton as a witness against the Queen's honour. The boy resists; but is finally induced to forswear himself, under the suggestion, that the proof of her infidelity would be used only so far as to procure a divorce, her life being spared in consequence.

The Queen goes to the tilting match at Greenwich, where the King's pretended jealousy is inflamed by the incident of the handkerchief. The whole is thus described by Angelo :

• I stood

Within the tilt-yard, not to take delight
Carnal, unpriestly, in the worldly pageant:

Though, Heaven forgive me! when the trumpets blew,
And the lists fell, and knights as brave, and full

Of valour as their steeds of fire, wheel'd forth,

And moved in troops or single, orderly

As youths and maidens in a village dance,

Or shot, like swooping hawks, in straight career;

The old Caraffa rose within my breast

Struggled my soul with haughty recollections

Of when I rode through the outpour'd streets of Rome,
Enamouring all the youth of Italy

With envy of my noble horsemanship.

But I rebuked myself, and thought how Heaven

Had taught me loftier mastery, to rein

And curb with salutary governance

Th' unmanaged souls of men.

But to our purpose;

Even at the instant, when all spears were levell'd,

And rapid as the arblast bolt, the knights

Spurr'd one by one to the ring, when breathless leant

The ladies from their galleries

from the Queen's

A handkerchief was seen to fall; but while

Floating it dallied on the air, a knight,

Sir Henry Norreys, as I learnt, stoop'd down,
Caught, wreath'd in his plume, regain'd his spear,

And smote right home the quivering ring: th' acclaim
Burst forth like roaring waters, but the King