The pleasure derived from the contemplation of the unity resulting from plot, is far more intense than is ordinarily sup posed, and, as in Nature we meet with no such combination of incident, appertains to a very lofty region of the ideal. In speaking thus we have not said that plot is more than an adjunct to the drama -more than a perfectly distinct and separable source of pleasure. It is not an essential. In its intense artificiality it may even be conceived injurious in a certain degree (unless constructed with consummate skill) to that real life-likeness which is the soul of the drama of character. Good dramas have been written with very little plot-capital dramas might be written with none at all. Some plays of high merit, having plot, abound in irrelevant incident-in incident, we mean, which could be displaced or removed altogether without effect upon the plot itself, and yet are by no means objectionable as dramas; and for this reason-that the incidents are evidently irrelevant obviously episodical. Of their digressive nature the spectator is so immediately aware, that he views them, as they arise, in the simple light of interlude, and does not fatigue his attention by attempting to establish for them a connection, or more than an illustrative connection, with the great interests of the subject. Such are the plays of Shakspeare. But all this is very different from that irrelevancy of intrigue which disfigures and very usually damns the work of the unskillful artist. With him the great error lies in inconsequence. Underplot is piled upon underplot (the very word is a paradox), and all to no purpose-to no end. The interposed incidents have no ultimate effect upon the main ones. They may hang upon the mass-they may even coalesce with it, or, as in some intricate cases, they may be so intimately blended as to be lost amid the chaos which they have been instrumental in bringing about-but still they have no portion in the plot, which exists, if at all, independently of their influence. Yet the attempt is made by the author to establish and demonstrate a dependence an identity; and it is the obviousness of this attempt which is the cause of weariness in the spectator, who, of course, cannot at once see that his attention is challenged to no purpose-that in trigues so obtrusively forced upon it, are to be found, in the end, without effect upon the leading interests of the play.

"Tortesa" will afford us plentiful ex

amples of this irrelevancy of intrigue-of this misconception of the nature and of the capacities of plot. We have said that our digest of the story is more easy of comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. If so, it is because we have forborne to give such portions as had no influence upon the whole. These served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue the attention. How much was irrelevant is shown by the brevity of the space in which we have recorded, somewhat at length, all the influential incidents of a drama of five acts. There is scarcely a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an underplot-a germ, however, which seldom proceeds beyond the condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single instance, at at the dignity of fruit. Zippa, a lady altogether without character (dramatic) is the most pertinacious of all conceivable concoctors of plans never to be matured

of vast designs that terminate in nothing-of cul-de-sac machinations. She plots in one page and counterplots in the next. She schemes her way from P. S. to O. P., and intrigues perseveringly from the footlights to the slips. A very singular instance of the inconsequence of her manœuvres is found towards the conclusion of the play. The whole of the second scene, (occupying five pages,) in the fifth act, is obviously introduced for the purpose of giving her information, through Tomaso's means, of Angelo's arrest for the murder of Isabella. Upon learning his danger she rushes from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming that her evidence can save his life. We, the audience, of course applaud, and now look with interest to her movements in the scene of the judgment hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody after all; she will be the means of Angelo's salvation; she will thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes are bent, therefore, upon Zippa-but alas, upon the point at issue, Zippa does not so much as open her mouth. It is scarcely too much to say that not a single action of this impertinent little busybody has any real influence upon the play :-yet she appears upon every occasion-appearing only to perplex.

Similar things abound; we should not have space even to allude to them all. The whole conclusion of the play is supererogatory. The immensity of pure fuss with which it is overloaded, forces us to the reflection that all of it might

have been avoided by one word of explanation to the duke an amiable man who admires the talents of Angelo, and who, to prevent Isabella's marrying against her will, had previously offered to free Falcone of his bonds to the usurer. That he would free him now, and thus set all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt for an instant, and he can conceive no better reason why explanations are not made, than that Mr. Willis does not think proper they should be. In fact, the whole drama is exceedingly ill motivirt.

We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in the fourth Act, where Isabella is made to escape from the sanctuary through the midst of guards who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another occurs where Falcone's conscience is made to reprove him, upon the appearance of his daughter's supposed ghost, for having occasioned her death by forcing her to marry against her will. The author had forgotten that Falcone submitted to the wedding, after the duke's interposition, only upon Isabella's assurance that she really loved the usurer. In the third Scene, too, of the first Act, the imagination of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed, when he finds Angelo, in the first moments of his introduction to the palace of Isabella, commencing her portrait by laying on color after color, before he has made any attempt at an outline. In the last Act, moreover, Tortesa gives to Isabella a deed

"Of the Falcone palaces and lands, And all the money forfeit by Falcone." This is a terrible blunder, and the more important as upon this act of the usurer depends the development of his new-born sentiments of honor and virtue-depends, in fact, the most salient point of the play. Tortesa, we say, gives to Isabella the lands forfeited by Falcone; but Tortesa was surely not very generous in giving what, clearly, was not his own to give. Falcone had not forfeited the deed, which had been restored to him by the usurer, and which was then in his (Falcone's) possession. Hear Tortesa :

"He put it in the bond, That if, by anyчumor of my own, Or accident that came not from himself, Or from hisdaughter's will, the match were marred,

His tenure stood intact."

Now Falcone is still resolute for the match; but this new generous " humor" of Tortesa induces him (Tortesa) to de

cline it. Falcone's tenure is then intact; he retains the deed; the usurer is giving away property not his own.

As a drama of character, "Tortesa" is by no means open to so many objections as when we view it in the light of its plot; but it is still faulty. The merits are so exceedingly negative, that it is difficult to say anything about them. The Duke is nobody; Falcone, nothing; Zippa, less than nothing. Angelo may be regarded simply as the medium through which Mr. Willis conveys to the reader his own glowing feelings-his own refined and delicate fancy-(delicate, yet bold)-his own rich voluptuousness of sentiment -a voluptuousness which would offend in almost any other language than that in which it is so skillfully appareled. Isabella is the heroine of the Hunchback. The revolution in the character of Tortesa-or rather the final triumph of his innate virtue-is a dramatic point far older than the hills. It may be observed, too, that although the representation of no human character should be quarreled with for its inconsistency, we yet require that the inconsistencies be not absolute antagonisms to the extent of neutralization: they may be permitted to be oils and waters, but they must not be alkalies and acids. When, in the course of the dénouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence virtue-inspired, we cannot sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches, since they proceed from the mouth of the selfsame egotist who, urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many sotticisms (about his fine legs, &c.) in the earlier passages of the play. Tomaso is, upon the whole, the best personage. We recognize some originality in his conception, and conception was seldom more admirably carried out.

One or two observations at random. In the third Scene of the fifth Act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal authority over Isabella, (as usual, without sufficient purpose,) by virtue of a law which Tortesa thus expounds:

"My gracious liege, there is a law in Flo

rence,

That if a father, for no guilt or shame,
Disown and shut his door upon his daughter,
She is the child of him who succors her,
Who, by the shelter of a single night,
Becomes endowed with the authority
Lost by the other."

No one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid law as this

ever existed either in Florence or Timbuctoo; but, on the ground que le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say

that even its real existence would be no justification of Mr. Willis. It has an air of the far-fetched-of the desperate which a fine taste will avoid as a pestilence. Very much of the same nature is the attempt of Tortesa to extort a second bond from Falcone. The evidence which convicts Angelo of murder is ridi culously frail. The idea of Isabella's assuming the place of the portrait, and so deceiving the usurer, is not only glaringly improbable, but seems adopted from the "Winter's Tale." But in this latter play, the deception is at least possible, for the human figure but imitates a statue. What, however, are we to make of Mr. W.'s stage direction about the back wall's being "so arranged as to form a natural ground for the picture?" Of course, the very slightest movement of Tortesa (and he makes many) would have annihilated the illusion by disarranging the perspective; and in no manner could this latter have been arranged at all for more than one particular point of view-in other words, for more than one particular person in the whole audience. The "asides," moreover, are unjustifiably frequent. The prevalence of this folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the acting merit of our drama generally, as any other inartisticality. It utterly destroys verisimilitude. People are not in the habit of soliloquizing aloud-at least, not to any positive extent; and why should an author have to be told, what the slightest reflection would teach him, that an audience, by dint of no imagination, can or will conceive that what is sonorous in their own ears at the distance of fifty feet, cannot be heard by an actor at the distance of one or two?

Having spoken thus of "Tortesa"in terms of nearly unmitigated censure— our readers may be surprised to hear us say that we think highly of the drama as a whole-and have little hesitation in ranking it before most of the dramas of Sheridan Knowles. Its leading faults are those of the modern drama generally -they are not peculiar to itself-while its great merits are. If in support of our opinion, we do not cite points of commendation, it is because those form the mass of the work. And were we to speak of fine passages, we should speak of the entire play. Nor by "fine passages" do we mean passages of merely fine lan

guage, embodying fine sentiment, but such as are replete with truthfulness, and teem with the loftiest qualities of the dramatic art. Points-capital points abound; and these have far more to do with the general excellence of a play, than a too speculative criticism has been willing to admit. Upon the whole we are proud of "Tortesa"-and here again, for the fiftieth time at least, record our warm admiration of the abilities of Mr. Willis. We proceed now to Mr. Longfellow's

SPANISH STUDENT.

The reputation of its author as a poet, and as a graceful writer of prose, is, of course, long and deservedly establishedbut as a dramatist he was unknown before the publication of this play. Upon its original appearance, in "Graham's Magazine," the general opinion was greatly in favor-if not exactly of "The Spanish Student"-at all events of the writer of Outre-Mer. But this general

opinion is the most equivocal thing in the world. It is never self-formed. It has very seldom indeed an original development. In regard to the work of an already famous or infamous author it decides, to be sure, with a laudable promptitude; making up all the mind that it has, by reference to the reception of the author's immediately previous publication;-making up thus the ghost of a mind pro tem.-a species of critical shadow, that fully answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a substance itself, until the substance itself shall be forthcoming. But, beyond this point, the general opinion can only be considered that of the public, as a man may call a book his, having bought it. arises, the shop of the true, thoughtful, or critical opinion, is not simultaneously thrown open-is not immediately set up. Some weeks elapse; and, during this inval, the public, at a loss where to procure an opinion of the débutant, have necessarily no opinion of him at all, for the nonce.

When a new writer

The popular voice, then, which ran so much in favor of "The Spanish Student," upon its original issue, should be looked upon as merely the ghost pro tem.—as based upon critical decisions respecting the previous works of the author-as having reference in no manner to "The Spanish Student" itself-and thus as utterly meaningless and valueless per se.

The few-by which we mean those who think, in contradistinction from the

qualified

many who think they think-the few who think at first hand, and thus twice before speaking at all-these received the play with a commendation somewhat less prononcée-somewhat more guardedly than Professor Longfellow might have desired, or may have been taught to expect. Still the composition was approved upon the whole. The few words of censure were very far, indeed, from amounting to condemnation. The chief defect insisted upon was the feebleness of the dénouement, and, generally, of the concluding scenes, as compared with the opening passages. We are not sure, however, that anything like detailed criticism has been attempted in the case -nor do we propose now to attempt it. Nevertheless, the work has interest, not only within itself, but as the first dramatic effort of an author who has remarkably succeeded in almost every other department of light literature than that of the drama. It may be as well, therefore, to speak of it, if not analytically, at least somewhat in detail; and we cannot, perhaps, more suitably commence than by a quotation, without comment, of some of the finer passages:

"And, though she is a virgin outwardly, Within she is a sinner; like those panels Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary On the outside, and on the inside Venus." "I believe

That woman, in her deepest degradation, Holds something sacred, something undefiled,

Some pledge and keepsake of her higher

nature,

And, like the diamond in the dark, retains Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light."

"And we shall sit together unmolested, And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue,

As singing birds from one bough to another."

"Our feelings and our thoughts Tend ever on and rest not in the Present. As drops of rain fall into some dark well, And from below comes a scarce audible sound,

So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter,

And their mysterious echo reaches us." "Her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast,

The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, Rises or falls with the soft tide of dreams, Like a light barge safe moored."

Knocks at the golden portals of the day!" "The lady Violante, bathed in tears

Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis,
Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut,
Having won that golden fleece, a woman's
love,
Desertest for this Glaucé."

"I read or sit in reverie and watch

The changing color of the waves that break Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind."

"I will forget her. All dear recollections Pressed in my heart, like flowers within a Shall be torn out and scattered to the book,

winds."

"O yes! I see it nowYet rather with my heart than with mine

eyes,

So faint it is. And all my thoughts sail thither,

Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged

Against all stress of accident, as, in The Eastern Tale, against the wind and tide

Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains."

"But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame,

Which are the dreams of Love! Out of the heart

Rises the bright ideal of these dreams,
As from some woodland fount a spirit rises
And sinks again into its silent deeps,
Ere the enamored knight can touch her
robe !

'Tis this ideal that the soul of Man,
Like the enamored knight beside the foun-
tain,

Waits for upon the margin of Life's stream; Waits to behold her rise from the dark

Across the running sea, now green, now blue,

And, like an idle mariner on the ocean,
Whistles the quail."

These extracts will be universally admired. They are graceful, well expressed, imaginative, and altogether replete with the true poetic feeling. We quote them now, at the begining of our review, by way of justice to the poet, and because, in what follows, we are not sure that we have more than a very few words of what may be termed commendation to bestow. The " Spanish Student" has an unfortunate beginning, in a most unpardonable, and yet, to render the matter worse, in a most indispensable "Preface :"

"The subject of the following play," says Mr. L., "is taken in part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details. In Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically; first by Juan Perez de Montalvan, in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solis y Rivadeneira in La Gi tanilla de Madrid. The same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gipsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Doña Clara, which is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la

Sangre. The reader who is acquainted

with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the

plays of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs."

Now the autorial originality, properly considered, is threefold. There is, first, the originality of the general thesis; secondly, that of the several incidents, or thoughts, by which the thesis is developed; and, thirdly, that of manner, or tone, by which means alone, an old subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents, or thoughts, may be made to

produce a fully original effect—which, after all, is the end truly in view.

But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the rarest of merits. In America it is especially, and very remarkably rare:-this through causes sufficiently well understood. We are content per force, therefore, as a general thing, with either of the lower branches of originality mentioned above, and would regard with high favor indeed any author who should supply the great desideratum in combining the three. Still the three should be combined; and from whom, if not from such men as Professor Longfelchief niches in our Literary Templelow-it not from those who occupy the shall we expect the combination? But in the present instance, what has Professor Longfellow accomplished? Is he original at any one point? Is he original in respect to the first and most important the following play," he says himself, " is of our three divisions? The subject of taken in part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla." "To this source, however, I am indebted for the main inci

dent only, the love of the Spanish Student for a Gipsy Girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa."

The Italics are our own, and the words Italicized involve an obvious contradiction. We cannot understand how "the love of the Spanish Student for the Gipsy Girl" can be called an "incident," or even a "main incident," at all. In fact, this love-this discordant and therefore eventful or incidentful love-is the true thesis of the drama of Cervantes. It is this anomalous "love" which originates the incidents by means of which, itself, this "love," the thesis, is developed. Having based his play, then, upon this "love," we cannot admit his claim to originality upon our first count; nor has he any right to say that he has adopted he has adopted it altogether. Nor would his "subject" "in part." It is clear that he have been entitled to claim originality of subject, even had he based his story upon any variety of love arising between parties naturally separated by prejudices of caste-such, for example, as those which divide the Brahmin from the Pariah, the Ammonite from the African, or even the Christian from the Jew. For here in its ultimate analysis, is the real thesis of the Spaniard. But when the drama is founded, not merely upon this general thesis, but upon this general thesis in the identical application given it by