-These are my fine concerts!

I must be merry, with a mischief to me!

What a vile wretch was I, that could not bear
My fortune soberly! I must have my crotchets,
And my conundrums!

It is with regret I feel myself compelled to protest against so pleasant an episode, as that which is carried on by Sir Politic Would-be and Peregrine, which, in fact, produces a kind of double plot and catastrophe; this is an imperfection in the fable, which criticism cannot overlook, but Sir Politic is altogether so delightful a fellow, that it is impossible to give a vote for his exclusion; the most that can be done against him, is to lament that he has not more relation to the main business of the fable.

The judgment pronounced upon the criminals in the conclusion of the play, is so just and solemn, that I must think the poet has made a wanton breach of character, and gained but a sorry jest by the bargain, when he violates the dignity of his court of judges by making one of them so abject in his flattery to the Parasite, upon the idea of matching him with his daughter, when he hears that Volpone has made him his heir; but this is an objection that lies within the compass of two short lines, spoken aside from the bench, and may easily be remedied by their omission in representation; it is one only, and that a very slight one, amongst those venial blemishes

-quas incuria fudit.

It does not occur to me that any other remark is left for me to make upon this celebrated drama, that could convey the slightest censure; but very many might be made in the highest strain of commendation, if there was need of any more than general testimony to such acknowledged merit. The Fox is

a drama of so peculiar a species, that it cannot be dragged into a comparison with the production of any other modern poet whatsoever; its construction is so dissimilar from any thing of Shakspeare's writing, that it would be going greatly out of our way, and a very gross abuse of criticism, to attempt to settle the relative degrees of merit, where the characters of the writers are so widely opposite. In one we may respect the profundity of learning, in the other we must admire the sublimity of genius; to one we pay the tribute of understanding, to the other we surrender up the possession of our hearts; Shakspeare, with ten thousand spots about him, dazzles us with so bright a lustre, that we either cannot or will not see his faults; he gleams and flashes like a meteor, which shoots out of our sight before the eye can measure its proportions, or analyze its properties; but Jonson stands still to be surveyed, and presents so bold a front, and levels it so fully to our view, as seems to challenge the compass and the rule of the critic, and defy him to find out an error in the scale and composition of his structure.

Putting aside, therefore, any further mention of Shakspeare, who was a poet out of all rule, and beyond all compass of criticism, one whose excellences are above comparison, and his errors beyond number, I will venture an opinion that this drama of The Fox is, critically speaking, the nearest to perfection of any one drama, comic or tragic, which the English stage is at this day in possession of.

NUMBER LXXVI.

IN my foregoing paper, when I remarked that Jonson, in his comedy of The Fox, was a close copier of the ancients, it occurred to me to say something upon the celebrated drama of The Samson Agonistes, which, though less beholden to the Greek poets in its dialogue than the comedy above mentioned, is, in all other particulars, as complete an imitation of the ancient tragedy as the distance of times and the difference of languages will admit of.

It is, professedly, built according to ancient rule and example, and the author, by taking Aristotle's definition of tragedy for his motto, fairly challenges the critic to examine and compare it by that test. His close adherence to the model of the Greek tragedy is in nothing more conspicuous than in the simplicity of his diction; in this particular he has curbed his fancy with so tight a hand, that, knowing as we do the fertile vein of his genius, we cannot but lament the fidelity of his imitation; for there is a harshness in the metre of his Chorus, which, to a certain degree, seems to border upon pedantry and affectation; he premises that the measure is, indeed, of all sorts, but I must take leave to observe that in some places it is no measure at all, or such at least as the ear will not patiently endure, nor which any recitation can make harmonious. By casting out of his composition the strophe and antistrophe, those stanzas which the Greeks appropriated to singing, or, in one word, by making his Chorus monostrophic,

he has robbed it of that lyric beauty, which he was capable of bestowing in the highest perfection; and why he should stop short in this particular, when he had otherwise gone so far in imitation, is not easy to guess; for surely it would have been quite as natural to suppose those stanzas, had he written any, might be sung, as that all the other parts, as the drama now stands, with a Chorus of such irregular measure, might be recited or given in representation.

Now it is well known to every man conversant in the Greek theatre, how the Chorus, which in fact. is the parent of the drama, came in process of improvement to be woven into the fable, and from being. at first the whole, grew in time to be only a part. The fable being simple, and the characters few, the striking part of the spectacle rested upon the singing: and dancing of the interlude, if I may so call it, and to these the people were too long accustomed and too warmly attached, to allow of any reform for their exclusion; the tragic poet, therefore, never got rid of his Chorus, though the writers of the middle comedy contrived to dismiss theirs, and probably their fable being of a more lively character, their scenes were better able to stand without the support of music and spectacle, than the mournful fable and more languid recitation of the tragedians. That the tragic authors laboured against the Chorus will appear from their efforts to expel Bacchus and his Satyrs from the stage, in which they were long time opposed by the audience, and at last, by certain ingenious expedients, which were a kind of compromise with the public, effected their point. This, in part, was brought about by the introduction of a fuller scene and a more active fable, but the Chorus with its accompaniments kept its place, and the poet, 12

VOL. XXXIII.

who seldom ventured upon introducing more than three speakers on the scene at the same time, qualified the sterility of his business by giving to the Chorus a share of the dialogue, who, at the same time that they furnished the stage with numbers, were not counted amongst the speaking characters according to the rigour of the usage above mentioned. A man must be an enthusiast for antiquity, who can find charms in the dialogue part of a Greek Chorus, and reconcile himself to their unnatural and chilling interruptions of the action and pathos of the scene. I am fully persuaded they came there upon motives of expediency only, and kept their post upon the plea of long possession, and the attractions of spectacle and music; in short, nature was sacrificed to the display of art, and the heart gave up its feelings that the ear and eye might be gratified.

When Milton, therefore, takes the Chorus into his dialogue, excluding from his drama the lyric strophe and antistrophe, he rejects what I conceive to be its only recommendation, and which an elegant contemporary, in his imitations of the Greek tragedy, is more properly attentive to; at the same time it cannot be denied that Milton's Chorus subscribes more to the dialogues and harmonizes better with the business of the scene, than that of any Greek tragedy we can now refer to.

I would now proceed to a review of the performance itself, if it were not a discussion, which the author of The Rambler has very ably prevented me in; respect, however, to an authority so high in criticism must not prevent me from observing, that, when he says: "This is the tragedy, which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded," he makes it meritorious in any future critic to attempt at following him over the ground he has trod, for the pur