Marston introduces us to a lady in high life, who having begun her career as a public concert-singer, is morbidly sensitive to the faintest allusion to professional musicians, and this is the pivot on which a rather meagre plot turns. Mr. Mark Lemon, Mr. Gilbert Abbot à Beckett, and Mr. Shirley Brooks, all wrote farces and little comedies, but they gained their literary laurels chiefly as contributors to the London Punch. Mr. Wilkie Collins produced two sensational dramas, the Light-house and the Frozen Deep. The last-named piece, in which a young naval officer, who has joined a polar expedition, discovers in a sick and helpless comrade his detested, though till then unknown rival, but overcome by pity and a sense of duty, rescues him from certain death at the cost of his own life, met with an enthusiastic reception from the public; to which, it must be confessed, such accessories as the grand and wonderful Arctic scenery, with its glaciers, icebergs, and snowpeaks, not a little contributed. Mr. Planché has written some good pieces, particularly an historical comedy, called Charles XII. The scene is the island of Rügen, and the date is the time of Charles's hasty return, under a borrowed name, from Bender in Turkey. Mr. Pinero's principal work is the Money - Spinner, a piece with two interesting and amusing characters, a French detective officer and the eccentric Baron Croodle. Mr. Buckstone, Mr. Charles Matthews the younger, Mr. Howard Paul, Mr. Dion Bourcicault, and Mr. J. Oxenford, have successfully imitated or adapted several pieces by French dramatists. The two last-mentioned writers have also produced in collaboration the text of a highly successful opera, entitled the Lily of Killarney, founded on Gerald Griffin's fine novel, the Collegians, and set to music by the late Sir Julius Benedict. Mr. Brough, Mr. Leman Rede, Mr. Fitzball, Mr. Coyne, and Mr. Sullivan have likewise written several dramas, comedies or farces greeted with an ephemeral success, but of which very few seem likely to secure a permanent place on the stage or in the annals of English literature. AMERICAN POETS AND DRAMATISTS. In every work on English literature in the Victorian Age, an honourable place must be assigned to those American writers who during the same period have so well sustained the poetical reputation of their country. Not only are their productions English, in the sense of being composed in the English language, but some of them were originally published by their authors in London, while many others appeared simultaneously in England and America; hence no mean portion of modern American literature has been, so to speak, naturalized on English soil. The most esteemed American poets belong to the lyrical school. Didactic poetry is less cultivated in America; and though a few poems especially Longfellow's longer ones have been called epics, nothing as yet has been produced in America which European critics would regard as a true epic poem. In dramatic composition, too, America has achieved but little. Hillhouse, Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, and some other poets, have no doubt written dramas, but still America cannot yet boast of a great dramatist, and the repertoire of the American theatres is on the whole identical with that of the English stage. In the space at our disposal, we cannot pretend to do more than offer the reader a summary of the most noted American writers, in this department of literature, who were still writing in 1837, or have since then appeared, giving at the same time a few selected specimens from their works. We shall begin with E. A. Poe. The unfortunate genius, Edgar Allan Poe, was born in Baltimore, in January 1811. His father, David Poe, was for some years a law-student, but having made the acquaintance of a young English actress, called Elizabeth Arnold, he married her, and became an actor himself. About seven years later, they both died, within a few weeks of each other, leaving three children quite unprovided for. Edgar, the second of the family, was adopted by a wealthy and benevolent merchant, Mr. John Allan, who was married but childless. In 1816, this gentleman took young Poe with him to England, and put him to school at Stoke Newington, near London. When the lad returned to America in 1822, he for some time attended an academy in Richmond, and then went to the University at Charlottesville, where he fell into that dissipated course of life, from which he never afterwards could be reclaimed. Manners at Charlottesville were generally dissolute, but of all the students Poe was the wildest and the most reckless. Being desirous of embracing the military profession, he was sent by his kind patron, Mr. Allan, to West Point Academy, but though at first a favourite with the professors and the other cadets, he soon renewed his irregularities, and ten months after his matriculation was expelled from the institution. In the mean time Mr. Allan had re-married, and when he died in 1834, he left three children to inherit his property, and bequeathed nothing to his former protégé. From 1834 to 1837 Poe wrote for the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, and during this time he married his cousin, Virginia Klemm. She was as poor as himself, but he was warmly attached to her, and by her patience and tenderness she exercised a salutary influence on her unfortunate husband till her death in 1846. The poet has immortalized her in his beautiful poem, Annabel Lee. Three years later on the 7th Oct. 1849, Poe died of delirium tremens in a Baltimore hospital, at the age of thirty-eight. The most characteristic of Poe's poems is probably the gloomy and fantastic Raven, though we confess we have never read it with pleasure. Sitting alone in his chamber in "bleak December," the poet hears a tapping at his window lattice, and on opening the shutter there steps in "a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore." This "ebony bird" perches on a bust of Pallas, and in reply to the questions or thoughts of his host, croaks forth the same ill-omened reply, "Nevermore!" Passing over these sombre verses, we select as our specimens one of Poe's most varied and powerful poems, and the sweet and tender lines to which we have already alluded; both of which have been set to music by Balfe, the composer of the Bohemian Girl. THE BELLS. I. Hear the sledges with the bells What a world of merriment their melody foretells! In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II. Hear the mellow wedding bells, What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens while she gloats |