as the beginning of the fourth act, he is evidently at a loss to fill up the remainder of the play, and not a little puzzled how to keep the heroine alive till the end of it. This was indeed no small difficulty; as it is not easy to imagine what should restrain so proud and violent a personage one moment from escaping despair and infamy, and setting herself at liberty, after the broad shame' of her discovery with Lothario. Mr. Rowe seems by no means successful in the attempt. Soon after Lothario's fall, we are informed that a tumult has arisen in consequence of it among the partisans of that young nobleman, and that Sciolto's palace is attacked. The old man goes forth to repel their violence: the event we are never told of; but we must suppose it favourable, as he afterwards appears in safety. Horatio is in like manner assaulted in the streets; but this scuffle produces not, more than the former, any consequence whatever; if it be not, that Lavinia comes forward to distress us with her alarms about the safety of her lord. We are next presented with the long superfluous scene of reconciliation between him and Altamont. Follows, in the beginning of the fifth act, the spectacle of Lothario's dead body, with the music, the book, the bones, and the black hangings; by what means so furnished out, or for what service intended, it is not easy to discover. And in the end, Sciolto, who had given orders to have his gates well guarded, and had summoned his friends to attend him in his palace, having, against all probability, stolen out alone and unattended, on some errand unknown to any body, receives his death by means which we have not seen prepared, and in a manner which we do not understand. It is this circumstance that determines Calista's resolution; for though there had before this been much talking about death, and a great deal of preparation for it, still she had unaccountably delayed

the execution of a purpose, which she had from the beginning prepared us to expect whenever her guilt should be discovered; and which the desperate and horrid circumstances attending the discovery should have confirmed and accelerated. Thus, in the middle of the fourth act, a new spring of movement is brought into play; and the action is afterwards forced on, not by the passions of the principal personages, which had till then advanced it, and which alone ought to do that duty, but by the partyzeal of (we know not who) Lothario's friends: a power which we may suppose, if we please, but which we feel ourselves under no manner of necessity to suppose. Farther, the death of Sciolto is not well interwoven with that fresh thread, detached from the texture of the piece as it is, but figures as a mere accident; insomuch that we are almost equally surprised on being told of it, as if we were to hear that he had dropped down in a fit of apoplexy.

With all this, the play has beauties that must be relished by every reader of taste. It is particularly eminent for elegance and richness of expression throughout. The descriptions (with which it abounds) are equal to any in the language. And the subordinate degrees of all the passions, especially the amiable, are touched for the most part both with spirit and with delicacy. The high pathetic, however, is not any where to be met with in it, if we except one stroke, in the scene already taken notice of between Calista and her father. We must particularly remark the want of genuine pathos in Ca lista's noted soliloquy at the beginning of the fifth act, where that lady is by far too much mistress of herself, and discourses in a style very foreign to her circumstances: instead of being lost in the thoughts of her situation, she remarks on the scene, as a spec

tator might, that here is ample room for meditation. She tries the book, and descants upon the vanity of its precepts; she listens to the music, and approves the style of it: she expatiates on the pageantry of the death's head and bones; while the corse of the loved youth who had wrought all her troubles is noticed in fewer words than are bestowed on any of the other topics; and these words only an exclamation at the ghastliness of its appearance. This composure and unconcern are by no means what we look for from the ardent spirit of Calista, sitting at midnight by the dead body of her dear betrayer.' She had loved Lothario with passion; and her fondness for him had confessedly a little while ago full possession of her breast.--Only a few hours have passed since he was slaughtered in her presence. His faults are now expatiated in his blood.-She was a woman, not a Cato; and she had hitherto been represented as of a violent temper, rather than firm: so that we now indulge in the full hope to hear the genuine voice of grief and despair uttering not a single word but what immediately relates to her situation, and is suggested by it. It is not enough that she tells us the mind may here burst with thinking, and that she is full of anguish which no discipline can cure; nor that she feed the phrensy of her soul with solemn sounds, and invoke the infernal gods to match the horror around her. A thousand such fanciful exclamations express not truly any distress. They are not the language of anguish, which dwells, like every other strong feeling, steadily on its object, and is occupied with that alone, and not with talking of itself. It is the very griefs of Calista, the sources of pain opened afresh by the sight of Lothario, as he there lies,-compassion for his fate,-revived affection for his person,-the present scene compared with their stolen interview of love, the desolation she has spread around her,―her

lespair of relief;-these are the subjects we expect to see pursuing one another in her thoughts: and till these appear, say Calista what she may about her agonies, we are neither disposed to believe nor to pity them.

Yours, &c.

THEATRICUs.

6

To show that I take in good part the suggestion of my correspondent at the beginning of his letter, I will add to his observations on the tragedy in question a few lines to inform him that I was one of the audience who attended its representation some evenings ago, and received that very high entertainment which the performance of Mrs. Siddons always affords. Amidst the defects which Theatricus very justly remarks in the character of Calista, there is, however, a variety of high and stormy passion, which gives scope to the astonishing powers of this incomparable actress. These she displayed so forcibly, that some, who had not investigated the character so closely as my correspondent, thought she o'erstepp'd the modesty of nature in the force and whirlwind of her passion.' But let it be remembered, that Calista is a woman haughty and impetuous in the highest degree, and that the defence of guilt is always loud in proportion as it is hollow. In this, indeed, lay the admirable art with which she played the scene with Horatio; she rose in violence as the accusation was pressed upon her, and met his reproach and admonition with the fierceness of resentment and of pride, struggling with the anguish of guilt and of shame. Nor did she fail to give the poet (as is usual with her) some merit not his own, by infusing into the latter part of the play that tenderness of which she knows so well how to unlock the springs. In the

last interview with her father, particularly, and in her dying speech to Altamont, she conveyed this impression so strongly, that we quite forgot the blame which our justice should have laid upon Calista, and our tears flowed for her misfortunes with all the interest of compassion, and all the consciousness of virtue.

But the language of encomium is so familiar to this lady, that it were trite to continue it. In recalling her performance, I tried a much more difficult task, to remember some defect. One trifling error I imagined I discovered. In marking the sentiments of contempt and insolence, she sometimes used a voice, and assumed a countenance, rather of too familiar a kind. When she uttered the following lines,

'And blesses her good stars that she is virtuous'-
Is this the famous friend of Altamont?

- a tale-bearing officious fellow?'

"Who guiltless dies because her fool ran mad.'

And the evening before, in Lady Macbeth,

Was the Hope drunk

In which you dress'd yourself?

Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the old cat i' the adage.'

Methought in her speaking of such passages, there was a tone and look more allied to the comic than the tragic muse, and hardly dignified enough for the importance of the situation, or the high feeling of the moment in which they were pronounced. It was an observation of some of the great French actors upon Garrick, that he spoke admirably well the language of passion, but not quite as a hero would speak it. Though one might trace something of the costume of Paris in this remark, yet undoubtedly there is a form which passion puts on, different in different