Page images
PDF
EPUB

and to be so often and so long the subject of conversation; and of appreciating her literary talents, as well as her mental character. This I have here attempted, and alas! with too much success; for her writings and her actions, her head and her heart are very discordant.

Bliss and ness, according to her, are rhymes, and so are shade and mead, also er and ar, join'd and mind; but these are the rhymes "of a Bristol pool." Let us make some extracts from this poem.

"Howe'er the conduct of my life might err,

"Still my dramatic plans were regular.”

Alas! poor Hannah, both have been irregular. Again

"Not love, but wonder, I aspir'd to raise,

"And miss'd affection, while I grasp'd at praise.

"A fancy'd heroine, an ideal wife;

"I loath'd the offices of real life.

"O happy they for whom, in early age, "Enlight'ning knowledge spreads her letter'd page! "Teaches each headstrong passion to controul, "And pours her lib'ral lesson on the soul! "Ideas grow from books their nat'ral food, "As aliment is chang'd to vital blood. "Tho' faithless Fortune strip her voť'ry bare, "Tho' Malice haunt him, and tho' Envy tear, "Nor time, nor chance, nor want, can e'er destroy "This soul-felt solace, and this bosom joy!"

ANOTHER.

"Let the proud sex possess their vaunted pow'rs;
"Be other triumphs, other glories, ours!

"The gentler charms which wait on female life,

[ocr errors][merged small]

Be these our boast; yet these may well admit
"Of various knowledge, and of blameless wit:
"Of sense, resulting from a nurtur'd mind,
"Of polish'd converse, and of taste refin’d.”

VOL. III. TRAGEDIES.

IN a long and laboured preface to her tragedies, H. More has exerted her utmost strength, with, probably, some friendly efforts from those who are indeed holy, to purify herself from her youthful follies, indiscretions and sins, in hopes of appearing spotless among the religious; but she makes but an awkward and inconsistent saint. Her endeavours would go to prove the stage, under some ideal, mysterious and non-described regulations, a good school for virtue, yet not a proper spectacle for a person who turns christian. She is ashamed and sorry for having written plays, she wishes it to be forgotten that she ever constructed or launched any; that she ever attended the green room, stood behind the scenes, or waited in agonies the decisions of the gods and the pit. She apologizeth for having done so; she republishes them, however, and apologizeth for the act; she writes for and against the stage; she says, "video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor." In short, she exhibits a knowing, cunning, wicked & weak woman. Her doctrine seems to be "to continue in sin that grace may abound." What was a sin in her youth, she in her old age, when she is likely to be able to sin no more, acknowledgeth; but wisheth the world to

know how numerous and great these were; that they may the more readily give her credit for the eminence of her sanctity. The depravity, the weakness, inconsistency, and folly of human nature, is most glaringly conspicuous in this preface, wherein she repents, "looks back on the city," wishes to forsake her sins, yet sins again, hates and loves her former ways, wants to be virtuous and receive her reward without being really so, and to be thought holy without washing herself from her sin.

The whole of this conduct is explicable only on this principle, namely, an overweaning opinion of her own merit, which much artfulness and cunning are employed to conceal, and an insuperable vanity and love of adulation, which impelled her, as by an irresistible necessity, to live on in her old habits, and to repeat the sin of the republication of tragedies, a new species of instruction and amusement, which, at the same time, she maintains, in others, to be sinful and immoral. But she is now. converted to non-descriptism; and perhaps made her "election sure," being likely no more to "fall "back." The dramas, sacred and profane, were a considerable addition to the bulk, and, therefore, to the price of the copy-right; and what vestal or monk ever abstained from sin when tempted by money!

Lest my reader, who may not have perused, or not have by him, our author's works, should doubt the justice of my criticism, I transcribe a paragraph from the preface to 3d vol. p. 14.

D

[ocr errors]

"This observation adopted into practice might, it is pre"sumed, effectually abolish the qualifying language of many "of the more sober frequenters of the theatre, that they go "but seldom, and never but to a good play.' We give these "moderate and discreet persons all due praise for compara❝tive sobriety. But while they go at all, the principle is "the same; for they sanction, by going sometimes, a diver"sion which is not to be defended on strict christian prin"ciples. Indeed their acknowledging that it should be but "sparingly frequented, probably arises from a conviction "that it is not quite right.

"I have already remarked, that it is not the object of this "address to pursue the usual track of attacking bad plays, "of which the more prudent and virtuous seldom vindicate "the principle, though they do not always scrupulously avoid ` "attending the exhibition. I impose rather on myself the "unpopular task of animadverting on the dangerous effects "of those which come under the description of good plays; "for from those chiefly arises the danger (if danger there be} "to good people.”

66

[ocr errors]

"It is generally the leading object of the poet to erect a "standard of HONOUR in direct opposition to the standard of christianity. Honour is the religion of tragedy. Love, jealousy, hatred, ambition, pride, revenge, are too often "elevated into the rank of splendid virtues, and form a dazzling system of worldly morality, in direct contradiction "to the spirit of that religion whose characteristics are 'charity, meekness, peaceableness, long-suffering, gentle"ness, forgiveness.' The fruits of the SPIRIT' and the "fruits of the STAGE, if the parallel were followed up, as it 66 might easily be, would, perhaps exhibit, as pointed a con"trast as human imagination could conceive."

66

[ocr errors]

"People are told-and from whose mouth do they hear "it? That' blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek and the peace-makers.' Will not these and such like humbling propositions, delivered one day in seven only, in all the

.26

[ocr errors]

"sober and beautiful simplicity of our church, with all the "force of truth indeed, but with all its plainness also, be "more than counter-balanced by the speedy and much more "frequent recurrence of the nightly exhibition, whose pre"cise object it too often is, not only to preach, but to per

66

sonify doctrines in diametrical and studied opposition to 46 poverty of spirit, to purity, to meekness, forbearance, "and forgiveness. Doctrines, not simply expressed, as "those of the Sunday are, in the naked form of axioms, principles, and precepts, but realized, embodied, made alive, furnished with organs, clothed, decorated, brought "into lively discourse, into interesting action; enforced "with all the energy of passion, adorned with all the graces ❝of language, and exhibited with every aid of emphatical "delivery, every attraction of appropriate gesture. To "such a complicated temptation is it wise voluntarily, studiously, unnecessarily to expose frail and erring crea"tures? Is not the conflict too severe? Is not the com"petition too unequal?"

66

Το

"And it is perhaps one of the most invincible objec❝tions to many tragedies, otherwise not very exception"able, that the awful and tremendous name of the infi"nitely glorious God is shamefully, and almost incessantly introduced in various scenes, both in the way of "asseveration and of invocation."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"I purposely forbear in this place repeating any of those "higher arguments drawn from the utter irreconcileableness of this indulgence of the fancy, of this gratification "of the senses, this unbounded roving of the thoughts, "with the divine injunction of bringing every thought "into the obedience of Christ."

'

"It is the concomitant pageantry, it is the splendour of "the spectacle, and even the show of the spectators :"these are the circumstances which altogether fill the the“atre—which altogether produce the effect-which alto"gether create the danger. These give a pernicious force

« PreviousContinue »