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WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, NO 17, PRINCE'S STREET, EDINBURGH;

AND T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND, LONDON ;
To whom Communications (post paid) may be addressed;

SOLD ALSO BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

[OLIVER & BOYD, Printers, Edinburgh.]

WE intend, henceforth, to have an Article, in each Number, on the Political affairs of the Country, under the title of "The Warder."

The Analytical Essays on the Old English Drama will most probably be resumed in our next. We are forced, for the sake of variety, occasionally to interrupt the succession of Articles in themselves interesting.

We intend now, according to our promise made some time ago, to present our readers with accounts of the finest German Tragedies—at least six times a year. We are confident that our first specimen, in this number, will give general satisfaction.

Our Cork Correspondent's Letter, though dated 1st October, did not reach us till the 8th of November. We hope to hear from him frequently-and if he wishes to hear from us, he can tell us so.

The Letter sent to us by Mr Abraham Longchops, shews ability-but is by far too long, and we have tried in vain to shorten it.

The same objection applies, even to a greater degree, to the "Legend of Craigmillar Castle." It too is the work of a man of talent, and the opening is very picturesque.

The paper signed O. T. (the signature in pencil marks) it would scarcely be fair in us to publish. But if its author chuses to favour us on some other scientific subject, we believe him to be very able to write well.

N. N.'s remarks on Don Juan do great credit both to his head and heart. But we have already given our opinion of that poem; and though N. N. may have expressed his ideas better and more fully-we do not think that he has added any thing new to what we said on the same subject. His letter is now lying for him with Messrs Cadell and Davies.

For the same reason we must decline inserting another very ingenious paragraph.

John Greencorn writes very good-humouredly and facetiously-but we do not wish to resume the subject of his communication. We send our compliments to the Club. His Article shall be transmitted according to the direction.

A similar cause prevents us from inserting "Sarcasticus."

Viator's second letter in our next.

We intend ourselves to write a short notice of a poem lately published here, called, "Common Sense," by the Rev. Mr Terrot. "Common Place" would have been a more appropriate title." Tu quoque," therefore, is laid aside.

Our Unknown Friend în Derbyshire expostulates with us, in a very kind and amiable tone. We hope to improve, upon some of her (for so gentle a person must be a Lady) intelligent suggestions but as her letter seems intended solely for our own amendment and encouragement, we do not think it necessary to publish it.

Odoherty's first letter on the Errors of the Duke of Wellington in our next.

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We have returned to the judicious author (with a letter) An Account of a Visit to York Minster, &c."

The paper signed W. Old Vennal, Glasgow, probably in our next. Would a letter reach our Correspondent, addressed to him according to the subscription of his note to us? We regret that we can do nothing for our Islington Correspondent. It is a great hardship, no doubt, not to be permitted interment in a patent coffin-but it does not fall under our jurisdiction. Posthumus must apply to the proper authorities.

It goes to our very heart to reject poetry of any of our fair Contributors. But non-insertion does not imply disapprobation. A Sonnet to Lord Byron, (M. A. C.) in particular, we unwillingly reject-for-though inaccurate in one line or two-it is exceedingly elegant.

"A Young Lady" in our next.

We have received a well-written notice of "Select Sermons from the Danish of Dr Nicolas Edenger Balle" (sold by Ogle, Duncan, & Co. London) but we have not yet had an opportunity of reading the Sermons themselves.

Will A favour us with a prose Article?

We are told by C. D. to attempt to please every body. Did he ever make such an attempt? All that we wish is to please a great majority of mankind, and, as C. D. thinks we do so, we hope he will be contented with us; though there should be a few dissentient voices heard crying in the wilderness.

S. S. complains of our severity. No doubt, we have occasionally said a few sharp things; but, on the whole, as Editors go, we are among the best-tempered, and best-humoured, and best-natured of them all. We must take care not to get too tame.

"Man of age thou smitest sore,"

is an exclamation used only by a few Marauders.

Some notice soon of that entertaining little book, "Annals of Peterhead."

We had some other notices to Correspondents, but this one is in danger of falling over the brink of the page. So, for another month farewell.

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GUILT; OR, THE ANNIVERSARY.

(A Tragedy, from the German of Adolphus Müllner, &c.)

THE best German critics of the present day seem to be agreed in thinking very poorly of their own dramatic literature. They are proud indeed, as they ought to be, of a few masterly pieces in which the intellectual subtlety of Lessing the uncontrollable fire and energy of Schiller-and the matchless union of reason and passion which characterizes the genius of their Goethe, have been abundantly displayed. But they complain, with justice, that no one of these great men has given them such a number of fine works, composed upon one set of principles, and in one form, as might furnish any thing like a model for the erection of a true national literature of the drama. Each of them appears, throughout the whole of his dramatic career, to have been perpetually engaged in the search of some great idea or principle which might comprehend within itself the two elements of novelty and dignity, in such a manner as might render it worthy of lying at the root of a great superstructure destined to convey to the most distant times an adequate expression of the genius of German thought and German feeling. It may be doubted whether this search has been in any one instance successfully terminated by any of the three powerful writers we have named-and it is quite certain, that if such were the case, no one of themselves was ever quite satisfied that it actually was so. Of all Lessing's dramatic works, the Nathan the Wise is the only one which is now VOL. VI,

talked of in Germany as quite worthy of his genius; but, in truth, that singular production has very slender claims to the character of a proper drama. It is rather a philosophical romance, composed in a dramatic form

and as a romance, it is certainly one of the very best, both in conception and execution, to be found in the whole body of European literature. There was something exquisitely happy in the idea of choosing for the exhibition of a picture of the various characters of men as modified by the nature of their religious creeds, that fine period when men of so many different persuasions came together under the influence of the most opposite, and yet_the_most noble of feelings, to rival each other in all the heroism of devotion and chivalry beneath the inspiring sky of Palestine. The very name of Saladin, too, who is the true hero of the piece, possesses a charm beyond which nothing could be desired. It is a thousand and a thousand pities that all the beautiful imagery and passion of the scene and the poet should have been chilled by the coldness of those tenets, the propagation of which was the real object of the whole piece-but this very defect renders it less a matter of regret that the form of the piece, as a work of art, should have been such as it is—and that, therefore, the masterpiece of Lessing should have failed to be a German tragedy.In like manner, the greatest of all Goethe's works, the Faustus, although it exhibits, in

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the highest degree, almost every power necessary for the construction of perfect dramatic poetry, is, after all, a mere sketch, or rather a mere fragment of a mystical romance. The poet himself never dreamt of its being brought upon the stage-and, indeed, without the magic rod of Faustus himself, it would be utterly impossible to bring even any two or three consecutive scenes of it upon any theatre in the world. But Goethe has made many attempts to produce true acting dramas-he has tried every thing from pure imitation of the highest Greek tragedy in his Iphegenia, down to the almost prosaic delineation of domestic manners in his Stella and Clavigo and at last he seems to have given up the attempt partly from total dissatisfaction with the result of his own endeavours, and partly, no doubt, from observing the much more triumphant effect produced upon the public mind by those almost boyish works which first made known the name of Schiller. That fiery genius, however, was destined to prove, in the end, nothing more successful than his great master and rival. He has produced no works more perfect or satisfactory in form than Goethe's-and while neither the Wallenstein, nor the William Tell, nor the Mary Steuart, can be placed above the Egmont nor the Bride of Messina above the Iphegenia-it must be confessed, that among the whole creations of his genius, he has left nothing that can sustain, for richness of invention, for purity and variety and strength of language, any comparison with the Faustus. By that most untranslateable of all works, we think the great problem has been effectually solved, and for the first time of the possibility of possess ing and exercising even in immediate juxtaposition, nay, almost in perpetual interfusion with each other, the utmost powers both of clear speculative understanding and mysterious superstitious enthusiasm. If any man living can give any thing like a translation of it, it must be Coleridge-but with all his majestic dreams of imagination, and all his sway of sweet and awful numbers, we fear even he would fail to do for Faustus the half of what he has done for Wallenstein.

Since the death of Schiller, and silence of Goethe, the German drama does not seem to have produced any

thing worthy of being named along with their master-pieces. Imitation is more a passion among the modern German writers than even among our own-and, in general, it may be said, that the stages of Vienna, Berlin, and Weimar have been supplied with little more than caricature regenerations of The Robbers and the Götz of Berlichingen, and still more offensive, because more tame, stale, and spiritless copies of the more sustained and regular productions of the same mighty hands. There is much genius no doubt, and much fine passion in some of Henry Collin's plays, particularly, we think, his Coriolanus, which bears reading after Shakspeare's a thousand times better than Voltaire's Brutus does after the Julius Cæsar; but that poet wanted both originality of invention and command of expression to be a founder of any thing, far less to be a founder where such men as his great predecessors had failed. As yet the chasm remains unfilled-but after the extracts we are about to lay before them, our readers may, perhaps, be inclined to hope, that the rising genius of Adolphus Müllner may be destined, if wisely directed by himself, and sustained by the favour of his countrymen, to do much for the removal of the reproach. What would we not give to see such a genius among ourselves bestowing all the fine and free energies of his youth upon our own drama. It is true we have not so much to wish for in this department as the Germans, but then, we also would indeed have high hopes, and he that might fulfil them, would indeed have high honours.

This tragedy, which is the first dramatic piece of regular length and construction that has proceeded from its author, produced a most powerful impression when brought forward on the Vienna stage, and continued during many weeks to form the chief subject of conversation among the highly elegant and cultivated audience of that city. It has since been acted with dis-, tinguished success on almost all the other stages of Germany, and has, in fact, already taken a place quite superior to that of any drama written for many years in the language of that country. There are many minor excellencies which have had their share in creating so speedily for the piece this high distinction; but the main cause

of it must, without all doubt, be sought in the profoundness of those views of Man and his whole destiny, which have been embodied by the author in his performance-views which were never before perhaps embodied in any German drama with so much consistent and uniform seriousness of thought, purpose, and expression, but of which scattered traces may be found in not a few of their most favourite pieces, formed on the Greek model, and in which those who are acquainted with their literature in many of its other branches, will see abundant reason for supposing there is much to harmonize with the prevailing spirit of German thought and philosophy. The interest of this tragedy is deep-it grapples with, and reveals, so far as they can be revealed, many of the most hidden mysteries of the human soul. The elements of feeling, of which it chiefly makes use, are indeed simple elements, unperplexed in the main with any sophistical or phantastic intermixtures, and undisguised by any considerable crowding together of events, incidents, and personages. But the simplicity, both of the story itself, and of the passions which it developes, does not diminish, but very greatly increase the effect of the whole drama. There is enough to satisfy both the eye and the imagination, and surely there is more than enough to awaken trains of reflection that must be lasting, because they are essentially inexhaustible. The nobility of man, when he falls a free-will offering to his virtue ;-his poverty, his misery, when he has sinned against the voice of conscience, and feels himself thenceforth to be a cast-away, a limb dissevered by unworthiness from the harmonious whole of nature;-these are the great and beautiful ideas which this poet has undertaken to illustrate, by his living picture of the workings and the fortunes of humanity. On that picture no man can look without unconcern, for who is he that is so pure and so happy, as to find nothing in such a picture that reflects back some faint image of what has passed within himself? The thoughts that he scarcely dare avow to himself have ever passed across his mind-the feel ings that have been smothered-the passions that have been strangled in their evil birth-all these are forced back upon his memory; and in read

ing the tragedy of GUILT, every man must confess to his own soul, that in much he has been guilty.

The greatest beauty in Müllner's management of his fable, lies in the skilful and yet perfectly natural manner in which he has contrived to exhibit guilt in the fulness of its miserywithout so far disgusting us with his guilty hero, as to take from us any part of that lively interest with which fortunes so strange as his are, are formed to be regarded. In this respect there is no play in the world, except only Macbeth, that seems to us so fully to satisfy the mind of the reader or the spectator. In the Bride of Messina, indeed, there is much of the same merit; but the defect of harmony in the whole tone of feeling and language in that powerful tragedy, is sufficient to counteract, in no slight degree, the deep impression its catastrophe might otherwise have been fitted to create. Imperfectly, notwithstanding, as the moral of that tragedy is brought out by the personages of the fable themselves-it is nobly expressed by the chorus in its conclusion; and, in truth, those sublime words (not easily to be rendered) might have formed, with equal propriety, the conclusionof Müllner's tragedy, or of Schiller's. "Das leben ist der güter hochstes nicht, Der übel grösstes aber ist DIE SCHULD."

Another great excellence is the author's use of the idea of Destiny-the manner in which he has presented that idea throughout, with all its power and mystery, and yet without compromising in any degree the entire freedom and responsibility of the agent. His hero, Hugo, is brought before us as one concerning whom evil action and miserable fortune had been foreboded and predicted even before his birth; and yet, with such truth and power has he given back the image of our mysterious life, that this circumstance does not clash with any of our natural feelings concerning the proprieties of retribution-and we see, that however much of his life may have been foreknown, he was yet master of that life, and the sole artificer of all its issues. In poetry, which is itself the reflection of life, through a medium that both beautifies and magnifies that which it reflects-above all, in such noble poetry as that of Müllner-we are not astonished, that more of the hidden mysteries of life should be seen,

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