ing in the sick-chamber of Ethwald. It is midnight.

Eth. Hark! some one comes.

(Listening with alarm.)

Queen. Be not disturb'd, it is your faithful groom

Who brings the watch-dog; all things are

(Looking steadfastly at the groom.) Thy face is pale; thou hast a haggard look: Where hast thou been?

(Seizing him by the neck.) Answer me quickly! Say, where hast thou been?

Groom. Looking upon the broad and fearful sky.

Queen. What say'st thou ?

Groom. The heavens are all a flaming o'er our heads,

And fiery spears are shiv'ring through the air.

Eth. Hast thou seen this?
Groom. Ay, by our holy saint!
Queen. It is some prodigy, dark and
portentous.

Groom. A red and bloody mantle seems outstretch'd o'er the wide welkin, and

Eth. Peace, damn'd fool!

Tell me no more: be to thy post withdrawn.

(Exit groom by a small side-door, leading the dog with him.) Eth. (To himself, after musing for some time.) Heaven warring o'er my head! there is in

this

Some fearful thing betoken'd.

If that, in truth, the awful term is come; The fearful bound'ry of my mortal reach; O'er which I must into those regions pass Of horror and despair, to take my place

(A long pause; then Ethwald starting up from the couch with alarm.) I hear strange sounds ascend the windingstairs.

Queen. I hear them too.

Eth. Ha! dost thou also hear it? Then it is real. (Listening.) I hear the clash of arms. Ho, guard! come forth.

Re-enter GROOM. Go rouse my faithful dog; Dark treason is upon us.

Groom. (Disappearing, and then re-entering.)

He sleeps so sound, my lord, I cannot rouse him.

Eth. Then, villain, I'm betray'd! Thou

hast betray'd me!

But set thy brawny strength against that door,

And bar them out. If thou but seem'st to flinch,

This sword is in thy heart.

Vol. II. page 354-356.

Ha! dost thou also hear it?-Then it is real!-What a distinct conception do these few words inspire of the constant agitation and feverish suspicion of the usurper's mind!

We have not left ourselves space to speak at length of the remaining plays.

The tragedy of Rayner is, though containing many beautiful passages, almost a failure. It was an early effort. The plot-to use a word of Garrick's-is ill concocted; the subject is unpleasing; and it is altogether a scrambling and uninteresting play.

Constantine Paleologus is perhaps

the very finest of our author's works. The taste which has given up the stage in our great national dramatic establishments, to the empty absurdities of French melo-drames and equestrian spectacles, seems to have taken refuge in the minor theatres. Constantine, neglected by both Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden, was acted with the greatest applause for upwards of fifty nights in succession at the Circus.* The last scene of this play is peculiar ly beautiful. "It has," says the Edinburgh Review, "all the truth and simplicity of nature, but no effect." If events so interesting and important as those occupying the concluding scene of Constantine, be indeed pourtrayed with " the truth and simplicity of nature," the want of effect cannot be ascribed to the imperfections of the author, but to the defective sensibili. ties of the critic.

Orra, notwithstanding the unplea sant vulgarity of one of the inferior characters, is a most exquisite and touching performance. It has been said, that the subject of this play is "A Young Lady who is afraid of Ghosts." And, in the same manner, the subject of Othello is a black gentleman, whose wife had lost her pocket-handkerchief; but the shallow disseminators of such trumpery observations are beneath our contempt; they are not directed by a spirit of criticism, but of calumny; they sacrifice the just claims of talent, to the paltry vanity of uttering a smart and pert expression; and they can propose to themselves no imaginable result from their facetiousness, beyond that of arming the uninventive spleen of mediocrity, with a collection of readymade insinuations against the exertions of superior genius.

The Dream, a prose tragedy, in three acts, we should class, with Rayner, in the inferior class of Joanna Baillie's writings; except that the opening and the concluding scenes are very far superior to anything contained in the earlier published play.

The beautiful little sketch, the Beacon, concludes her volumes:-and it is with difficulty that we refrain from offering another extract. The third scene of the second act is faultless. It

Oh, welcome, bat and owlet gray,
Thus winging low your airy way;
And welcome, moth and drowsy fly,
That to mine ear came humming by ;
And welcome, shadows long and deep,
And stars that from the blue sky peep;
Oh, welcome all! to me ye say,
My woodland love is on her way.
Upon the soft wind floats her hair,
Her breath is in the dewy air,
Her steps are in the whisper'd sound
That steals along the stilly ground.
Oh, dawn of day, in rosy bower,
What art thou to this witching hour!
Oh, noon of day, in sunshine bright,
What art thou to this fall of night!

If the passages which we have here presented, do not fully justify the high admiration which we have expressed for the genius of the exalted woman whose works have formed the subject of the present observations; we may have compromised our own reputation for discernment, but we have at least dealt fairly with our readers, and afforded them, by the copiousness of our extracts, the opportunity of judging and deciding for themselves.

We have not mentioned the Comedies of our authoress, because, though they are evidently the productions of a very clever woman, they are by no means entitled to the high distinction of being placed in contact with the more splendid efforts of Joanna Baillie's genius. We wish they had not been published; for, to have disappointed, in one branch of literature, the expectations which have been excited by an author's success in another, will always, to a certain degree, impair the lustre of any, even the brightest, reputation.

It is not given to the human foresight to divine which, among the many distinguished names of our cotemporaries, shall circulate in the conversations of posterity, and become illustrious among the generations that are yet unborn. Posthumous celebrity is not the certain recompense of superior genius. It is not pre-eminent abilities, and the worthy occupation of them alone, that are sufficient for the raising up a deathless name. Much of chance and accident is mingled in the preservation of the works, and in effecting the permanent renown of those who are emulous of literary distinction; and in contemplating the labours of our living poets, no man can with any confidence decide which among them shall successfully float down upon the stream of time, or which shall be stranded by untoward circumstances on the, banks and shoals of the current. But if the authoress of Plays on the Passions would consent to publish an edition of her collected works, omitting all the comedies and the few tragedies that are unworthy of her, and adding only such among her manuscripts as are equal to the best efforts of her pen-if she would alter such defective lines as some judicious male friend would readily point out to her, which do not perhaps exceed a hundred in the whole aggregate of her works, and of

which some occur to impair the influence of her most exquisite passagesIf she would thus remove the imper-. fections on the surface of her works, which, though they detract little from the admiration of the candid and the discerning, afford most admirable topics for the malignity of that multitude of readers, whose shallow talents are sufficient for the detection of a fault, but incapable of the apprehension of beauty, and who delight in discovering an opportunity of vindicating their intellectual inferiority by sarcasms on the exertions of the more endowed-if our authoress would consent to such a sacrifice, we should say that there were no productions of any living writer so certain of encountering few impediments to their progress, and securing the admiration of posterity, as those of Joanna Baillie. Her powers are not inferior to those of the most illustrious of her cotemporaries-to Southey-to Scott-or Byron. She is not a writer for any particular age or fashion, but trusts, like Shakspeare, for the success of her works to the general sympathies of our race, and appeals to those permanent affections which are common to us all. There is a peculiarity in her style and language, which casts over the moving picture of her scenes a sweet, autumnal hue, caught from the deep and mellow tints of our elder Dramatists; but she is far superior to all that mannerism of thought and feeling which is engendered of narrow views of life, and of a poor and bounded imagination. We are aware that in entreating her to cast aside her comedies and a few other of her works, we call upon her to make an enormous sacrifice; we feel it to be such; we call on her to cast aside much that we should regret to lose, but this advice is given in a spirit of zealous admiration that cannot be distrusted. We wish her to cut away the weaker branches to secure the preservation of the thriving trunk; the works already published cannot, perhaps, be totally recalled, but the world will think kindlier of their errors when they are no longer sanctioned by the protection of so powerful a parent, and it must ever be remembered, that to have published less than our competitors, is one of the most certain means of outstripping them in the race of fame.

as Mars is made to do in Dibdin's dull burletta of Poor Vulcan :

You know our trade is WAR, And what should we deny it for ?

and any hostilities against us have been in general provoked by our uncompromising tone, our open and neverceasing display of contempt, and the fierce front that we have always shewn in defiance. We, therefore, complain not; far from it indeed. We take admirable care that any antagonist de serving of our notice, shall rue the day that his evil fate led him to provoke an adversary, whose powers and incli nation to smite the ungodly have ne ver been denied or even doubted. For the same reason, we make no complaint over their attacks on John Bull. He destroyed those to whom he opposed himself, and is still in ever-restless activity in the same pursuit. That the Whigs in their desperation should have resorted to the till then unheardof method of calumniating the supposed editor by name, is only in accordance with the usual shabbiness of their conduct. We should be ashamed, in deed, that any of our writers, turning away from the consideration of the principles, should abuse the editors of the Morning Chronicle and Times Mr, or Mr, by allusion to their personal history, even if their lucubrations happened by any rare chance to possess sufficient talent to call forth our anger.

But admitting, as we freely do, the propriety of attacking us, and others like us, we must add, that the literary scavengers who took up the trade of assassin, displayed a feeling of filthy malignity in their impotent attacks on the great writers of the party, which is laughable from its feebleness, while it disgusts by its baseness. Words worth is taunted in the Edinburgh Review, and a thousand minor puddles, with being a stamp-master, as if that had anything to do with the Excursion, Southey is abused for being Laureate, and his boyish extravagancies flung in his face-how Coleridge has been insulted, it is needless to recapitulate-and the amiable life, and undeviating kindness of Sir Walter Scott, cannot save him from venomous nibblings from people, whose exertions in this sort remind us of the achieve ments of the mouse in the Batracho myomachia.

Καὶ στέρνης λαβόμην, και οὐ πόνος ἵκανεν ἄνδρα.

As they cannot understand what we have quoted, we may as well inform them, that in their attacks on the most eminent literary character of the country, in cowardice of manner, in skulkingness of operation, in imbecility of effect, and total want of impression on the object assailed, they may find their prototype in their brother VERMIN.

We shall give our readers one specimen of their attacks. In the London Magazine for February, 1823, it may perhaps be remembered by some few people, there was a review of Peveril of the Peak, marked by an insulting spirit. The Author of Waverley was compared to Cobbett, &c. All this is perhaps fair enough, and not more absurd than what is given us by the idiots of the New Monthly, who find evidences of a conspiracy against the liberties of the country in the Scotch Novels; but we distinctly recollect feeling a slight sensation of disgust on reading it. We did not at the time know, what has since come to our knowledge, that it had contained a passage of consummate blackguardism. Between the first and second paragraphs as they now stand, another was originally printed, and, good reader, here it is.Observe that the Vermin had attributed the Scotch Novels already by name to Sir Walter Scottan assertion which he repeats immedi ately after.]

"There were two things that we used to admire of old in this author, and that we have had occasion to admire anew in the present instance, the extreme life of mind or naturalness displayed in the descriptions, bigotry and prejudice shewn in the drawand the magnanimity and freedom from ing of the characters. This last quality is the more remarkable, as the reputed author is accused of being a thorough-paced partisan in his own person,—intolerant, MERCENARY, MEAN; A PROFESSED TOAD. EATER, A STURDY HACK, A PITIFUL

RETAILER OR SUBORNER OF INFAMOUS SLANDERS, A LITERARY JACK KETCH, who would greedily sacrifice any one of ano ther way of thinking as a victim to prejudice and power, and yet would do it by other hands, rather than appear in it himself. Can this be all true of the Author of Wa verley; and does he deal out such fine and heaped justice to all sects and parties in times past? Perhaps (if so) one of these extremes accounts for the other; and, as