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POETIC and DRAMATIC.

Art. 19. Self Immolation; or, the Sacrifice of Love.
Three Acts. By Augustus Von Kotzebue.

A Play, in Translated from the German by Henry Neuman, Esq. 8vo. 25. Phillips.

1799.

This play has been altered for performance at the Hay-Market, under the title of Family-Distress. It is calculated to excite strong interest, and is well adapted to the modern stage: but we have still to complain that the plot is unconnected, and that the piece consists almost entirely of detached scenes. There is, also, still too much of the feeling and energy confined within crotchets, instead of being suffered to expand itself in the dialogue :-of which we observe a strong instance in the scene where Maxwell is restored to his family after an attempt at suicide. The whole impassioned part evaporates in dumbshew, and the first observation made comes from a bystander, (a sentitimental porter) who recollects that Maxwell wished to turn porter in the morning!

- SCENE XII.-Enter MAXWELL, WALWYN, and HARRINGTON. • Maxwell. (Still of a death-like paleness in his countenance,—his bair hanging down in disorder,—his looks down-cast,—is led by Walwyn to Arabella.)

Arabella. (Attempting to rise, is unable, but sinks back, and holds out her arms.)

Maxwell. (Kneels before her, and with involuntary feebleness, lays his head in her lap.)

Arabella. (Bends sobbing over him.)

Hartopp. (Wipes his eyes with his fingers aukwardly.)

Harrington. (Stands lost in deep thought; and now and then casts a look on the re-united pair.)

Maxwell. (Lifts up his head, and looks on Arabelia with an expression of anguish.)

Arabella. (Clasps his neck, and joins her cheek to his.)

Walwyn. Beholds them with strong emotion.)

Hartopp. By my soul, it is the man, who, this morning tried my load. He perhaps carried heavier than I.

Harrington. Are you not the same person, who this morning asked my assistance in the tea-garden?

Maxwell. I am.'

Mr. Von Kotzebue's plays are so much liked in this country, with all their faults, that we wonder that none of his admirers think it worth while to divest them of those excrescences which disfigure them in the eyes of men of good taste, and the absence of which no English reader or spectator could regret..

Art. 20. Vortigern, an Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts; represented at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane. And Henry the Second, an Historical Drama. Supposed to be written by the Author of Vortigern. 8vo. 43: Barker. 1799.

The Goddess Dulness, the natural and implacable enemy of Shakspeare and his fraternity, has made divers attempts to blast the laurels

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of

of our great dramatist, by inserting some of the poppy and henbane of her own sons among them. The forgery of Theobald's Double Falsehood is perpetuated by the Dunciad; we remember a tragedy on the subject of Arden of Feversham*, which was given to the world as a lost sheep of Shakspeare; and in the present instance, we should have lost a sheep, if he had not bleated;' for verily the risible tragedy of King Vortigern had quite escaped our memory, until this publication recalled it.

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Of all the impositions ever attempted on the public, this is unquestionably one of the most gross and contemptible. There is scarcely a line of ten syllables properly accented, in a play attributed to Shakspeare! Wherever any slight resemblance to our poet appears, it is the effect of a bungling and disfiguring plagiarism. Who does not perceive that the following egregious soliloquy is made up of shreds and patches from Macbeth?

Vort. Thus far, then, have my deeds a sanction found,

For still each morn doth the resplendant sun

Dart forth its golden rays, to grace my sight.

O what an inconsistent thing is man!

There was a time when e'en the thought of murder
Would have congeal'd my very mass of blood;
"And, as a tree, on the approaching storm,
E'en so my very frame would shake and tremble;"
But now I stand not at the act itself,
Which breaks all bonds of hospitality.-
To me, the King hath ever been most kind;
Yea, even lavish of his princely favours,-
And this his love I do requite with murder!
And wherefore this? What! for a diadem,
The which I purchase at no less a cost
Than even the perdition of my soul;
Still at that self-same price will I obtain it.
The rooted hate the Britons bear the Scots
Is unto me an omen most propitious;
I have dispatched my secret emissaries,
And the young princes, sons of the old King,
(A long time since for study sent to Rome)
Even for them have I prepared honours:
For ere the moon shall twice have fill'd her orb,
Death shall provide for them a crown immortal!'

It would be a waste of our pages to make many farther quotations; the reader may consult, for more parallelisms, pp. 8. 10, 11, of Vortigern, all taken from Macbeth.

At page 41, we have a dash of Lear:

And have I need of these vile rags; off! off!
I'll follow thee to th' extreme point o' th' world,
And naked hear the icy mountains cold,
And the dread scorches o' that ball of fire
Till I have found them i the antipodes;

See M. Rev. vol. xliii. p. 493.

Shou'd

Shou'd I not meet them there, I will rail so!-
Pardon these starts! in troth I will not harm ye,
Indeed, indeed, I'm wrong'd! most sadly wrong'd!
Did these sweet notes then charm ye! then I'll die,
For look you, I will then sing sweeter far,

Than dying swan at ninety and nine years!

Lack, lack, a day! I'm faint! your arm, sweet maid.

There is my gage, farewell; good night, sweet! good night!'

In p. 65, Macbeth is again laid under contribution. The sentence of the audience is therefore fully confirmed in our court. For a ge-. neral character of the play, we shall use the best words-those of our bard himself :

"A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted.
And tragical, my noble lord, it is-

Which oben I saw rehearst, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water: but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed."

The unhappy fate of Vortigern, we suppose, prevented his succes sor, Henry the Second, from mounting the stage. There is no rea son for regretting the absence of his royal eloquence, for thus doth he declaim:

Then short-mantled Harry bids ye beware!

Is this to be said or sung?]

For as the tigress, when stirr'd from her whelp,
Will piece-meal tear the intruding hunter,
So is't with me, if lowering on these smiles
Ye rouze the dunny spirit of revenge.' P. 2.

We presume that the elegant, impressive, and noble epithet,, which we have distinguished by Italics, must have been borrowed either from the kings of Brentford or from Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, of, immortal memory; and we give our decided vote for its being sent back to the place whence it came.

Art. 21. The Castle of Montval, a Tragedy. By the Rev. T. S. Whalley. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Phillips, &c. 1799.

The author of this play has very modestly and properly given the land of its success on the stage to Mrs. Siddons. Could he have printed her countenance and gestures with his own dialogue, it might probably have passed muster with the reader: but, left to its own powers, it proves tame and spiritless, in spite of the fashionable ad juncts of secret doors, old tapestry, and rusty knives. One novelty, however, we have remarked, and it is fit that we should notice it ;-as the marginal directions of Mr. Von Kotzebue are not yet adopted by our tragic writers, the author of this play has ingeniously distinguished the emphatic words in his verses, by printing them in Italics. For Example:

• Teresa. Nay, nay, good friend,.

If he has hitherto ne'er trusted you

To keep these keys, 'tis odds but he wou'd rather
My lady guarded them till his return.

Blaise. If not to me, entrust them to Lapont;
The count in him has perfect confidence.

Teresa. Think you Lapont is trusted like my lady!
To her the doating count has still reveal'd

His inmost thoughts.-He loves her with such passion,
And finds his tenderness so well return'd,
That were his life and honor both at stake,
To her, with free and fearless confidence,
Wou'd both be trusted.-Rest assur'd of this.

Blaise. Enough you ought to know their humours best.
But yet my heart misgives me that some trouble

Will surely spring from these forgotten keys.'

These detestable keys form the distress of the play, during a couple

of acts.

The plot, which turns on the accidental discovery of an aged father, who had been imprisoned during several years in his own castle by the cruelty of an unnatural son, is said to be founded on a well-known fact, which happened, the author believes, somewhere in the south of France, and so recently as in the year eighty three.'Art. 22. Poems by the Rev. Josiah Relph of Sebergham, near Carlisle. With the Life of the Author, and a Pastoral Elegy on his Death. By Thomas Sanderson. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Whatever opinion may be formed of Mr. Relph's poetic genius, the memoirs here given of him cannot be read without exciting the most pleasing emotions; for they exhibit the picture of a man who, placed in a remote village, and little favoured by the gifts of fortune, found the means of practising the brightest virtues, and, by his precepts and examples, of effecting a reformation in the sentiments and manners of his parishioners.

Faulder.

We must reluctantly pass, however, from a contemplation of the moral qualities of Mr. Relph, to an examination of his works.-Of the pastorals in the Cumberland dialect, we confess ourselves not competent judges: the editor, who perhaps may be rather partial, speaks of them in the following manner:

His pastorals, if they had been less uniform in their plan and sentiments, and more diversified in local imagery, by admitting a wider range of rural life, would have presented us with a more faithful picture of pastoral manners and customs than has yet been given. The sentiments are natural and appropriate; and the language is familiar without grossness: it is never elevated above the rural character by too much refinement, nor ever depressed below it by disgusting val garity. His swains discover their fears and their hopes, their inten tions and their sentiments, like honest men, whom an intercourse with the world has not taught disguise. Their conversation, though i terate and unpolished, is that of rational beings; it is not disgraced by absurdities, nor made ridiculous by puerilities: it often discovers ignorance, but never folly.'

This praise may be exaggerated: but we know not whether we have ever seen so just a description of what a pastoral ought to be, The following is one of the most pleasing poems in this collection; Lines on a little Miss bursting into Tears upon reading the Story of the Babes in the Wood.

As the sad tale, with accents sweet,
The little ruby lips repeat,

Soft pity feels the tender breast
For infant innocence distress'd:
The bosom heaves with rising woe,
Short and confus'd the pauses grow;
Brimful the pretty eye appears,
And-bursts at last a flood of tears.

• Sweet softness! still, O still retain
This social heart, this sense humane:
Still kindly for the wretched bleed,
And no returns of pity need.

In plenty flow thy days, and ease,
Soft pleasures all conspire to please;,
Long may a Sire's affection bless,
And long a mother's tenderness.

And thou, O Bard! whose artless tongue,

The sadly pleasing story sung,

With pride a power of moving own,

No tragic Muse has ever known.

Compleat is thy success at last;

The throng admir'd in ages past;
Prais'd lately Addison thy lays,

And Nature's self now deigns to praise.'

To those who love epigrams, the following may not be displeasing: TO DEAN SWIFT, on his intention of leaving his fortune to build an Hospital for ideots.

Rather thy Wit, good Dean, than Wealth devise,

"Twill make at least a thousand Ideots wise.'

Mr. Relph's poetry is easy and natural, such as might be expected in a cultivated mind fond of the beauties of nature: but it does not abound either with tow'ring flights of fancy, or with originality of thought. If the rhimes sometimes appear careless, we should consider that the poet died in the year 1740, when so much attention was not generally paid to the harmony of numbers as at present.

Art. 23. Pizarro. The Spaniards in Peru; or, the Death of Rolla. A Tragedy, in Five Acts: by Augustus Von Kotzebue. Translated from the German by Anne Plumptre. 8vo. pp. 93. 2s. 6d. Phillips, &c. 1799.

This is a translation of the original play from which the splendid and popular tragedy of Pizarro, lately in representation at Drury-lane, is taken. Having already laid before our readers a view of the altera

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