How now!

Dear friends and pupils--come, be men, be men.
Don't whimper-courage! My eye and hand are steady-
Where is your virtue? Was it not for this

I sent away the women? Prithee do not
Fall into such ridiculous weaknesses?
I've always heard it said that a brave man
Should die in pure serenity, blessing God.

CRITO.

Is there no drop of poison left for us?
We could die with thee.

SOCRATES.

Not a drop, dear Crito.
I took good care not to expose my pupils
To the temptation-sipping the remainder
To keep me company. No, if you'll excuse me,
I'll try the dark experiment alone.

You'll follow when the Gods shall summon you—
Not a jot before. Ah, my old limbs do stiffen ;
I feel the invading coldness. I'll lie down,
Even as the jailor bade me.

JAILOR (pressing the feet of SOCRATES).

This pressure, sir?

Upward to the heart?

Do you feel

SOCRATES.

JAILOR.

Icy coldness steals

SOCRATES.

It does-I feel it does.

But in this little instant, ere my heart
Grows wintry-Crito-you remember, Crito-
We owe a cock to Esculapius-

Discharge the vow for me-do not forget it.
That most divine physician of lapsed souls
Shall yet revisit-in that future-then-

No.

(SOCRATES dies.

SCENE V.

ANYTUS in banishment near Heraclea.

No refuge no escape-the eternal vengeance
Of gods and men pursues the murderers,
Whose perjury caused the death of Socrates.
Melitus have the Athenians massacred;
Lycon and Aristophanes remain

Irreparably degraded-though they live,

I wander in doomed exile, cursed by all

Even my own self. My hands are red with blood-
The blood of innocence; my conscious heart
Grows pale within: and on my burning brow
The brand of horrible remorse hath stampt
Indelible perdition. In my eyes

Men read my crimes, and hunt me like a wolf.
These Heracleans, too, have taken the oath
Of vengeance on my head.

HERACLEANS (rushing in).

And here a dagger ;-drink, as you made him drink,-
Or, by the Gods! the dagger on the instant

Shall be sheathed in thy heart.

ANYTUS.

Horrible, horrible!

HERACLEANS.

Demon !-drink thou and die!-let the earth hide

Thy curse-crowned execrable head, and hurl

Thy spirit down the blazing throat of hell

That yawns for thy destruction.

ANYTUS.

'Tis the doom

Of the just Gods. Thus do I make atonement To the shade of Socrates. May Heaven forgive me! (He drinks and dies.)

HERACLEANS.

There leave the wretched corpse,-do not pollute
Your hands by touching it. We'll cast a heap

Of stones upon it, and it shall remain
A witness to our children; they shall point
To the accursed spot, and trembling, say
"Here lies the body of a murderer."

454

COGITATIONS OF A CONTEMPLATIST.

No. IV.

"Prizes would be for lags of slowest pace,

Were cripples made the judges of the race."

DRYDEN.

I KNOW not what will be thought of my critical abilities, when I declare my intention of undertaking the defence of a writer whose very name has become synonymous with extravagance and bombast. Nat Lee's plays were most of them crowned with a success on the stage which many dramatists of the present day would envy; but his name has suffered wrong, by being always pertinaciously associated with his worst production. This has often been the fate of authors; for the public (to its shame be it spoken!) more frequently applaud extrinsicalities than excellencies. But whatever may be the faults of Alexander the Great, it does not deserve the contumely which has been so relentlessly heaped upon it. Although we admit the truth of the charge that it continually outleaps all recognized bounds in its diction and its sentiments, yet this is rather caused by an excess of poetry and feeling, which the writer knew not how to control, than the contrary. If this tragedy be bombast, the bombast is such as only a poet could write in the drunkenness of his inspiration. Conceding the utmost to our opponents, it is the work of a fine imagination, rejoicing in a noble liberty from the curb of reason. Were I asked for a brief character of the play, I should pronounce it to be poetry gone mad.

I assert, in spite of all contradiction, that the character of Alexander the Great, as portrayed by Lee, is just and true to nature. It is that of a young man who, ere he has yet lost the hot blood of youth, prostrates the world at his feet; and the splendour of whose achievements, transitory misfortune serves but to heighten. Thus phrenzied by the continued whirl of success, he gives free way to his presumption and his pride; nor will be thought less than a god. Swelled out with his unwieldy greatness, resistance to his will appears to him an impiety; in his own eyes he is the Fate whose decrees all men await with terror; and in the intoxication of his glory he manifests, at each slight contradiction, the headlong impetuosity and furious passion of a man who would rule others, without knowing how to govern himself.

Now who will deny that this is nearly the exact developement of character which an individual would undergo in the circumstances supposed by the poet? No one could bear the weight of such amazing fortune-attained, not when age had mellowed with experience, but in the first blush of puberty-without feeling himself madden beneath his burthen. But it is objected that such a portraiture of Alexander is not hsitorically correct. Even if this be the fact, we might reply that the Poet is not bound within the limits of the conventional and the historical; that his office is to embody the ideal in palpable forms, and to distinguish it by distinctive attributes; and

that to do this he has full liberty of selection and rejection. We might meet the objection thus, and our plea would be fully sufficient; but Lee's view of the mighty conqueror's character is not entirely indefensible, even on the score of history. Whatever may have been Alexander's virtues at the commencement of his career, we cannot conceive that one, who on the death of a favourite, could throw down the battlements of cities, crucify physicians, cut off the manes of horses and mules, bestow ten thousand talents on a sepulchre, and put a whole nation to the sword in order to alleviate his grief and make a sacrifice to his friend's ghost, differed materially from the headlong hero of Lee. Again, it is urged, that the violence of Alexander's passion for Statira is inconsistent with the character of strict continency given to him by nearly all historians. This objection, however, is entirely obviated by the fact, that for some period previous to his death his manners were infected by a general dissoluteness, as is admitted even by his panegyrist Plutarch. Lee has made a curious jumble of history and fiction in the plan of his play; but the dissensions of the rival queens, and the uxoriousness of Alexander, are not entirely unconfirmed by graver authors.

The last objection brought against Lee's Alexander is, that his manners are unfitting a hero. I do not pretend to know what the critics, who advance this objection, require of the buskined hero of two hours; whether they would have him eternally prate about liberty like Addison's Cato, or bluster and bully like Dryden's Almanzor; but I believe that if the defence I have above made be admitted, Lee will not run much danger of condemnation from their strictures. How a professed hero should conduct himself-how he should walk, speak, and love is altogether such a disputable point among critics, that even Achilles himself is obnoxious to censure. This consideration will afford a sufficiently wide loophole for the escape of Nat Lee.

The critics, after attacking Alexander himself, next fall foul of Clytus. In him, they say, the poet has confounded rudeness with honesty; and thus by inference taught the pernicious doctrine, that all good breeding must be necessarily the mask of the villain and the hypocrite. If the character were legitimately chargeable with such an intention on the part of the author, it would indeed be deserving of severe reprehension; but a little consideration will induce the reader to record an acquittal. Clytus is represented as a rough-hewn soldier, whose life had been passed in camps, and not in courts-as one to whom the field of battle had become a congenial home. To such a man, the opportunity of acquiring the arts of politeness could never have been presented; his best years had been spent in toil and danger, far from aught that could polish or refine; and, accordingly, he gives a full license to his deeds and his words-neither boasting his love, nor disguising his hatred. He possesses the rough virtues of a rough man-honesty and dauntless hardihood. The character of Clytus is quite justified by the circumstances which are supposed to have surrounded him; to have made him a smooth-spoken courtier would have rendered him a monstrosity. He is not held forth to us as a proper model for imitation; on the contrary, his uncouthness is exhibited and exposed as a fault. Before any man could adduce the

example of Clytus to extenuate an habitual disregard of the conventional forms of good society, he must show that he had the same lack of the means of knowledge.

The rest of the male characters I shall dismiss to the sentencer; only remarking that they seem to be intended as commentaries on the character of Alexander; for all their speeches and actions declare the mighty exaltation and grandeur he had attained:

"He comes, the fatal glory of the world,
The headlong Alexander, with a guard
Of thronging crowns, comes on to Babylon,
Though warned, in spite of all the powers above,
Who by these prodigies foretell his ruin!"

I must not, however, part in this manner with Roxana and Statira. To the interest excited by the violent antagonism of these two women, may perhaps be attributed the success which the play, for so long a period, enjoyed. It is owned, even by those least disposed to favour the pretensions of our poet, that few have excelled his power of depicting the glowing fever of Love. His lines seem frequently to tremble and burn with desire, until we feel the truth of Dryden's assertion.*

"That 'tis no longer feigned-'tis real love!"

Lee, in the management of the passion of his two queens, has exhibited
a piece of exquisite art. It was needfnl for the conduct of his plot,
that our sympathy should be excited on behalf of Statira, and our
justice prevented from siding with Roxana. Nor was this all; it was
expedient that Alexander should have some plausible plea for his
preference of Statira, since Roxana was confessedly the first wedded,
and therefore possessed of the superior right. Both the rivals express
the same ardour and intensity of passion; but there is a fatal diffe-
rence in the quality of their love, which at once robs Roxana of our
esteem. Statira loves the man-the mere Alexander, apart from the
adventitious adjunct of his greatness; but it is the mighty monarch,
the dreaded master of the universe, that Roxana adores. Her passion
only consists in the gratification of a haughty self-love, as she herself
is made to confess in the following lines:-

Rox. "You thought, perhaps, because I practised charms
To gain the king, that I had loose desires:

No, 'tis my pride that gives me height of pleasure,

To see the man by all the world admired,

Bowed to my bosom, and my captive there;

Then my veins swell;

My breasts grow bigger with the vast delight;
'Tis length of rapture, and an age of fury.”

We despise Roxana for being able to entertain such a passion as this; for owning that she has been won, not by the intrinsic worth of the man, but by the external magnificence with which he is surrounded. The love of Statira is disinterested; and although born of prosperity, would apparently stand the shock of adversity uninjured:

* In his verses to Lee.