bably never have written a good tragedy, and you are answered. A better way, however, is to refer you to my first letter, where I declare my wish to encourage the dramatic spirit of the times; and to my last letter, where, as some have thought (and as you yourself, rather inconsiderately for your present charge against me, seem to think), I have scattered my incense with too liberal a hand at the shrine of Joanna Baillie and Minor Beddoes. Again, too, the mite of praise which I award to Professor Milman becomes in your eyes a mountain, which you accordingly blame me for setting to his credit. Finally; the second last paragraph of my Postscript imputes some dramatic spirit to Lord Byron, which he utterly disclaims, and you are not forward to attest:-Yet after this triple oblation of praise upon my part, and to every item of which you demur as too liberal, your letter still impeaches me of unkindness! I confess I am not in the practice of writing hymns or dedications; and, truly, the Dramatists of the Day deserved their disappointment, if they expected my Letters, or those of any other impartial critic on the same subject, to be sown as thick with compliments as an ode or an epitaph.

Now indeed is the time for encouragement. Not for your drama, -that merits nothing short of reprobation; but for having the good sense to despise it, and the candour to acknowledge that you despise it. We may take your letter as a proof that the Dramatists of the Day are beginning to see their error; and the consciousness of an error is the first step towards redeeming it. Now may we hope that you will desert those principles of dramatic composition which you tell us you despise; and now is the time for encouraging you to approach (in a modern way) that example from which you had so il limitably departed, -the Shaksperian or genuine drama. There are two grounds for encouragement; first, you seem to have found out that you have not been as yet legitimate dramatists; second, you seem to be pretty well aware (if I may take from your letter, Terentius, the sense of your fraternity) that you are, and always will be, excellent poets. Whether from discovering that you have

been hitherto in a wrong path you will now pursue the right one; whether from being confessedly poets, you will ever become dramatists; are questions upon which I had rather not hazard a prophecy. I have accomplished my object: the expectation, faint as it was, with which my Letters set out is now fulfilled,

a "nascent impulse towards legitimate dramatism” has been created: with you it remains to nourish the momentum thus communicated into full operation. In one of my letters, I said that my satisfaction would be complete, if my arguments had converted one dramatist; your epistle, and the private acknowledgment of another of your profession, have more than given me that satisfaction. Contented with this, I shall henceforward leave the matter in your own hands, at the same time professing my willingness to assist, as far as lies within the compass of my humble abilities, to any legitimate endeavours which may be made by the Dramatists of the Day to regenerate the English Stage.

You may perhaps recollect, Terentius, that in the course of my letters I more than once disclaimed all pretension (superfluously you will say) -to infallibility. In truth, the vehemence of my nature, and a foolish propensity to speak in hyperbole, may well make me tremble for the rectitude of my conclusions and the accuracy of my opinions. Yet temerity is rather the characteristic of my language and imagination, than of my judgment, such as it is; and upon a reconsideration of all I have said in my Letters and Postscript on the subject of the drama, I am but little disposed to reverse any of my decisions made therein. There are one or two of these, Sir, (minor ones indeed) impugned by your letter, which, however, at the same time frankly acknowledges the general truth of my theory, and the rectitude of my principles with regard to the Tragic Drama. Upon these objections I mean to remark; more however with a view to elicit, by means of an amicable controversy, truth and a right understanding of these matters, than to vindicate my own irrefragability,—a thing as I before allowed, problematical in all cases and immaterial in this. First,

then, you deny, that of the three schools into which I have distinguished our national drama, your school, the Poetic to wit, is the worst. The Poetic school, i. e. that to which Cornwall, Haynes, Milman, Shiel, &c. belong, you deny to be inferior to the Rhetoric school, i. e. that to which Lee, Congreve, Addison, Young, Rowe, Southerne, &c. belong. That you should deny this is not at all miraculous; but that you should attempt to establish the very opposite assertion, by argument and example, is a specimen of hardihood, only agreeable to the character of one who is accustomed to "pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,' on the back of a soaring Pegasus; that is, who can see excellence there, where no one but a poet would ever think of finding it. You must be pole asunder, indeed, from a man of plain common sense (viz. a downright poet), to dream of upholding such a fantastical opinion. I should like to see how our friend Nathaniel's lip curls, or even how Penitent Nicholas loops up his nose, when his ear-trumpet catches the sound of your presumption, above the moon, in the limbo of poets departed? But the reputation of such an attempt is the only reward you derive from it; its success is by no means proportionate to the boldness of the experiment. Notwithstanding your advocacy, the Poetic bench of our national drama is still lower by a breakneck step than the Rhetoric; if Nat. Lee had, by an anticipation of the fauxpas you moderns have made, fallen from one to the other, he never would have "torn a passion to tatters" for the benefit of another sublunary audience; they would have sworn he had lost (not his senses, poor fellow!) but his tongue, if his words had slipped over their ears after the dulcet fashion of Haynes or Milman. No, sir; take my word for it, Evadne is not equal to the Mourning Bride, nor Durazzo to Cato, though neither Congreve nor Addison ever kissed the hem of Melpomene's garment ;-neither Shiel nor Haynes ever kissed her sacred toe, nor approached within Heaven's length of her footstool. You, sir (by whatever name you will be called), are not equal, as a dramatist, to Young or Southerne, though you may

be a better poet than any one of the same century. In fact, here lies the error of your argument: because you are (at least you say so) better poets than the Rhetoric school, and because, as you justly observe, poetry is an essential instrument of perfect tragedy,-you hence conclude you are the better tragedists. A most unwarrantable conclusion, Sir! For though all the poetry that ever deafened the echoes of Parnassus were breathed through a dialogue, still, if that dialogue wanted action, it would not be drama; whilst, on the other hand, action alone is sufficient to consti tute (not a perfect) but a reasonably effective drama. You say you are better tragedists than the Rhetoric school: prithee, Terentius, which of your tragedies will you compare, as an acting drama, with the Revenge. Is it Fazio, Evadne, Durazzo, or Mirandola? Which do you think, an hundred years hence, our great grand-children would prefer on the scene,-Rowe's Fair Penitent, or Haynes's Conscience? Speak openly, Terentius; whether, in your opinion, has the Temple of Fame or the trunk-maker's laboratory the best chance of the four modern tragedies above-said? But there is VIRGINIUS, you say! Ask the author of Virgi nius himself, whether he thinks his drama as good a play as Young's, and if he answer you in the affirmative, I shall have a much greater opinion of his vanity than of his discrimination. No, Terentius; the criterion which you seek to establish, and by which you think you can prove the superiority of the Poetic to the Rhetoric school of drama, is not a true criterion,-viz. the com parative houses brought by each school. Novelty might have brought a

congregation of gapers to witness Evadne or Mirandola; satiety keeps them at home when the name of Zanga or Isabella stands rubric on the bills. How many round-eyed spectators, think you, would Evadne or Mirandola bring now to a theatre? Are they not already laid upon the highest shelf of the property-room, embalmed in a cob-web? And has not old Cato still one foot upon the stage, though the other has slipped "into the blind cave of eternal night?" Even Virginius is popular, partly because it is new, and chiefly

because a certain disciple of Roscius has made the character his own. But look a century into the future, and tell me whether the vindictive Moor or the stern Roman swallows the proscenium with greater applause? Can you not hear with your eyes?-God bellows to groundling and groundling to god, that Vir ginius is not fit to serve Zanga as a mute, much less to divide with him the palm of dramatic eloquence.*

I grant (or rather repeat): 1st, That the Rhetoric school is a bad school; 2d, That the Poetic school has emancipated itself from the grand error of the Rhetoric-hollow declamation. Hence I may fairly allow that the Poetic school has a better chance of attaining to perfect dramatism (i. e. finite perfection) than the Rhetoric ever had; inasmuch as the latter was deficient in poetic feeling, with which no art could supply it, whilst the former is deficient in action, which, although more necessary to drama than poetic feeling, is a quality of easier acquirement. But this has nothing to do with the comparative merits of the two schools as they now stand; the Rhetoric, though bad, is the best; its productions are better acting dramas than those of its successor, which has not as yet acquired for itself the quality of action. And if you assert, Terentius, that the Poetic, having emancipated itself from the error of the Rhetoric, and being free to pursue a better method, is therefore a better school, I will answer, that when it does add action to its poetry, then, and then only, will I allow the Poetic to be the superior; but unfortunately for the Io triumphe! which I see now be ginning to tremble on your lips at this my concession, then and then exactly will it cease to be the Poetic, merging into the legitimate and purely dramatic school. So long as it shall continue to be the Poetic, that is, so long as it shall continue to be deficient in action and redundant in poetry, so long will it be the worst, as it is the last, school of our tripartite national drama. In fact, having in your letter granted it to be utterly

deficient in action, I do not see how you can properly call it dramatic at all, much less contend for its superiority to the Rhetoric, which is drama, though imperfect and wrongheaded. But you perhaps speak of your school more with reference to its capabilities, than its actual qualities; to what it may (with good conduct) be, than to what it is. In the same way you might assert that a sheet of white paper is better than a leaf of Lord Byron, because it may be inscribed some time or other by a better poet.

In one particular the Dramatists of the Day are, I acknowledge, superior to those of the Rhetoric school, viz. in poetic feeling. It is true, I did not in my Letters particularly spe cify this redeeming quality in your school, and it is equally true that I ought to have done so. My inten tion was, I assure you, to have mentioned it to your honor, at the conclusion of my subject; now, as you may have seen from my Postscript, I concluded my subject in the middle (Magazine limits not permitting me to expand it farther), and thus unwittingly defrauded you of a compliment, which I was as prepared to pay as you to receive. Nevertheless, had you been satisfied with merely asserting the superiority of your school in this respect, and with charging upon me, error, neglect, or unkindness, in omitting to particu larise it,-I should most probably have cried you mercy and explained. But when, instead of this, you rashly impeach the justice of my decision which allots to you and your compeers lower seats in the dramatical synagogue than to Lee, Young, Rowe, and their contemporaries, I find in myself a disposition much less to apology than satire.

Secondly: you complain that I "treat you unfairly in trying you by the standard of Shakspeare." Pardon me, Terentius; I do not try you by the standard of Shakspeare, if by this you mean comparing your works with his. I never compared your works to Shakspeare's. No; God forbid! I never could have

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been guilty of such impiety. But I submit that the best way of illustrating your faults, is by setting them in opposition to the corresponding beauties in the best tragedies extant, i. e. Shakspeare's. This is what I have done; and if there had been more perfect dramas than Shakspeare's in existence, I would have chosen them for my modulus. Expound to me, Terentius, what benefit in point of instruction could you have derived from a faulty passage or erroneous principle in one of your works being confronted with another faulty passage or erroneous principle out of Fletcher or Massinger? Do we teach a young artist to paint from a Cartoon or a sign-post?

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Thirdly: you dispute my assertion that "poetry is the accident not the essence of drama," contending that poetry is absolutely "essential" to tragedy. Here it is evident that we merely disagree (by your favor, X. Y. Z.) about the meaning of a word. I use the word "essence' in its philosophical, you in its popular acceptation. By the essence of any thing, I mean, that which makes the thing be what it is called. Now drama may certainly be drama, though written in the most pedestrian prose (v. g. the Gamester or George Barnwell); hence poetry is not the essence of drama, but the accident of it, i. e. that without which a thing may be what it is called. Action is the essence of drama, poetry is only essential to perfect drama, which I never contested. But even in a perfect drama, poetry is very often, and necessarily, impertinent,—or the dialogue could never proceed with sufficient rapidity. There is very little poetry, if any, in Venice Preserved, and not much in Richard III, yet the one is an effective, and the other (what may be called) a perfect tragedy. Besides, if poetry were strictly essential to drama, it must run through every sentence of a drama, or that sentence which it did not pervade would be undramatical; but there are numberless patches of dialogue in Shakspeare's four sublimest tragedies, which are not at all poetical, yet perhaps as essentially dramatic as they could be. (Vide the quotations from Othello in the fourth Letter to Dramatists.) Hence, poetry

not being essential to every part of a perfect drama is therefore only incidental (or accidental) to the drama. You, when you assert that poetry is essential to drama, mean nothing more than that it should be frequently and boldly interwoven with the ground-work of drama, namely—action. In this sense of the word, I agree that poetry is indispensable to drama; yet nevertheless, poetry is no more the essence of tragic dialogue, than foam is the essence of a torrent; the torrent and the tragedy may both roll on, for a time, without either froth or poetry, and yet be veritable torrent and tragedy. But if either of them want action, then indeed the torrent degenerates into a standing pool, and the tragedy into a downright poem. This explanation serves, I hope.

Your remaining objections either have been anticipated in my Postscript or are not of that importance to require an answer. Lord Byron is a man of splendid genius; but it was not his genius which created our mo dern poetry. It had long been threatening to descend upon us in a flood, and had already overflowed through the several mouths of Macpherson, Wordsworth, Scott, &c. It would soon have found another funnel had his lordship never troubled Parnassus, As to the author of MIRANDOLA, if he, as you assert, heartily despises his tragedy, I may reckon upon him as a third convert, amongst the Dramatists of the Day, to my principles,

unless he perchance may be the other face under a hood with Terentius Secundus.

My most grateful acknowledg ments for your disinterested adviceto write a drama myself; to "set you an example" (as you say) how to compose a drama, as I have given you one how to criticise it. I should gain nothing by this, Terentius; nothing but my shame and the odd hits," with which every " puny whipster" who "gets my (critical) sword" might favor me. Besides, Í have already answered this demand upon me for a drama, in the last paragraph of my Postscript.

I remain, however, A friend to you and your Fraternity, JOHN LACY.

BYRD

DEAD A MONTH