liberty, all her
There is cer-
A Narrative of
Restoration of

account for, or reconcile to her known love of subsequent devotion to the Bourbon family. tainly something in the tone and character of Events, from the Landing of Bonaparte to the Louis XVIII.,' which we do not quite approve : we find not in it the same clearness, earnestness, and decision, or the same degree of honorable political avowal and sincerity, which distinguish some of her earlier writings.

ART. III. The Son of Erin; or, the Cause of the Greeks. A Play in five Acts. By a Native of Bengal, George Burges, A.M. Trin. Coll. Cambridge. 8vo. pp. 136. Miller. 1823.

ART. IV. A Letter to the Rev. T. S. Hughes, by Edmund Henry Barker, Esq. of Thetford, Norfolk, occasioned by the Perusal of his "Address to the People of England in the Cause of the Greeks." 8vo. 7s. 6d. sewed. Whittakers. 1823.

E devote a single article to the two pamphlets of which the titles are here prefixed, on account of the identity of their subjects, and notwithstanding the wide difference in their mode of composition, as well as their having no other resemblance. In addition to the laudable object of awakening the public sympathy to the cause of the Greeks, Mr. Burges, a worshipper of the muses on the banks of the Ganges and of the Cam, has been inflamed with a still higher zeal, that of reforming the drama; and The Son of Erin' is a specimen of the reformation which he proposes.

6

A narrow-minded critic might question the existence of the valuable quality called Modesty, in a writer who assumes with little ceremony the right to call himself the founder of à new school;' and who, in another place, professes that ineffable contempt, which every man who claims to be above the common herd does and must feel for the bigotry of custom.' We must do him the justice, however, to allow that he has amply established his claim to originality; and that he is so far from being the servile imitator of Sophocles, Euripides, Shakspeare, or Racine, that not a line in his play brings one of those great masters to our recollection: nor will his style be mistaken for that of any other author, living or dead. We might therefore, indeed, be not a little perplexed to account for the rejection of so fine a drama by the London managers, although we concur in the reason assigned for returning it, "its being above the intellect of the audience:" because this inconvenience might, we apprehend, have been obviated by dispersing among the audience the very same notes which Mr. B. has subjoined for the benefit of his readers. By this simple process,

process, the plot would, as Bayes says, "be insinuated into the boxes," and the rest of the auditory be enabled to guess at the writer's meaning. Of the assistance rendered by these annotations, our readers will hardly form an idea without an example. In the first act, the leader of the pirates, in answer to some compliments paid him by his comrades, observes that' he could better thank them

'were his heart all tongue: Then might I tell, what pleasure riots here,

To think that we, called outcasts by the world,' &c.

Mr. Burges has kindly told us, what the grammatical construction of the passage would never have suggested, that by: here is meant the heart. If, however, any doubt can be entertained respecting the absolute necessity of these annotations, it will be right to observe that all Mr. B.'s jokes and puns would be wholly lost without them; and what can be a better contrivance than that by which he explains what no other being could possibly find out? In the following exquisite, passage, two puns occur; of which the first is so intrinsically excellent as to be its own interpreter. One of the pirates is, thus addressed by an Irishman:

Counter. Ex-pirate, by your leave, Mr. Paddy, as the time of our service is ex-pired. The Admiral, you see, has hoisted his yellow flag.'

The humour of this last allusion, which is too latent and unobtrusive to be brought to light without artificial means, is admirably explained by the note. 'A retired admiral is said to have hoisted the yellow flag; and, to understand the pun, Kalitza is supposed to have on a yellow dress.' Here we have two-fold information, viz. that which relates to the yellow flag, and the colour of the dress which it is requisite to wear, in order to understand and justify Mr. Burges's puns. Such, at least, is the grammatical meaning of the sentence. We were at first rather puzzled to discover in what way the drama before us could be beneficial to the cause of the Greeks but the difficulty soon vanished. Those who are hostile to this cause speak of the degraded state of the intellect of that people, and the universal ignorance which prevails among them: but Mr. B. refutes this error by giving his Greek pirates an almost universal knowlege. What vast conceptions must be formed of the attainments of that nation, when its outlaws and its robbers are enabled to understand distringases and the sheriff's return to writs in the English courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas! Talking of

the

the profits of their concern, one of them remarks that it has been vested in not tangible securities, and that the answer to the distraining writ will be "nulla bona," or no bonus in a bad concern,' The personage, indeed, from whom this admirable piece of humour falls, we suppose from his name to be an Englishman: but it is to Greek auditors that it is addressed; and we may estimate the surprizing progress which the Greek intellect has recently made, when we observe a set of banditti on a rock in the Archipelago so well read as to understand Blackstone.

If, however, we were inclined to deplore the inconsiderate rejection of this great drama on the score of the unnumbered beauties which it contains, and of a kind "unattempted yet in prose or verse," we are almost inconsolable when we advert to the moral truths which are so profusely scattered over it; and which, with the aid of good acting, would have had so impressive and so salutary an effect on the frequenters of the theatre. Of these aphorisms, many are new discoveries in moral science. Who would have arrived, by his own unenlightened reason, at the important truth that a life of depre dation communicates an improved moral sense, or a nicer perception of right and wrong, than the more regular and tranquil occupations of mankind?

'We, called outcasts by the world,
Have of the past, or good or evil deeds,
A keener sense than they whose moral tact
Is bruited by the vulgar prejudice,

Propped on prescriptive custom's rotten base.'

Female morality also, has not been neglected in the new dramatic school of which Mr. Burges is so justly vain of being the founder. That sensitive and shrinking modesty which, according to our northern opinions, diffuses over the faces of our fair countrywomen charms so exclusively their own, Mr. B. repudiates from his list of feminine attractions, and is in raptures with the sweet simplicity' of a young lady who invites a gentleman to repose on her bosom.

Sweet simplicity!

How would the prudish daughters of the North

Shrink from such words and deeds and thoughts as thine.
But there society, like the soil, is

All cold and stiff. The flow'rs of land and life

Lack vigor, tint, and perfume; here and there
A plant of sweeter scent, of richer hue,

Of more luxuriant leaf, is seen to live,
And only does not wither, and thus shows
Itself the exotic seed of warmer climes.'
REV. SEPT. 1823.

D

It

It is another aphorism in the female morality of this piece, that a woman is to speak out as she feels, and not to wait till the proposal comes from the other sex:

'Were man as left by nature, he would hear,
Nor woman blush to speak, from lips now closed,
By formal cold unfeeling custom, sounds

To thrill his heart and save it from th' embrace
Of insincerity. But now, a fair one shows,
Uncheck'd, affection tend'rest for a dog,
Endear'd by acts of tried fidelity,

- A virtue from man's calendar of deeds,
I grant, erased yet must she meet the eye
Of scorn from her own sex, and by hell-hounds,
In form of man, for ever on the slip

To pounce on unsuspecting innocence,

Be deem'd fit prey, should she with guileless heart
Feel, and say first, "Thou art my love, my life."'

Lost in this labyrinth of poetic and moral beauty, we have yet said nothing of the plot: but, indeed, the play is so ingeniously constructed that it has no plot; the author having, by means of his new dramatic principles, disencumbered himself of that which has generally been the first solicitude of dramatic writers, the construction of a regular fable by means of a series of events, all tending to one dramatic purpose. In this respect he has been true to his own philosophical definition of a drama; which excludes all plot or fable, and which we must use his own words to convey to our readers. The drama is a representation of thoughts, words, and deeds, felt, spoken, and done by one set of human beings, who assume the appearance of another set for such a length of time as the supposed events would demand for their exhibition in reality.' (Preface, p.ix.) After so luminous a definition, we need not ask with Schlegel, "What is the drama?" Mr. Burges, however, has omitted, in his enumeration of dramatic requisites, one which is strikingly exemplified in his own play; we mean, the communication of rare and recondite pieces of knowlege. Thus, for instance, we learn that the calling of the pirates, in addition to that of plundering the surface of the sea, is that of diving for and bringing up the treasures beneath it. When Gerall discovers himself, he exclaims,

In me the pirates' leader, Gerall, view,

Whose daring crew hath made these seas disgorge

Her richest treasure.'

Again. The vulgar admirers of female beauty will be somewhat surprized, when they learn that a lady's hand and arm should be streaked with many colours:

'Her

Her arms

Streaked with the varied hues of Flora's pride,
Rose, lily, hyacinth, from blood, skin, vein,' &c. &c.

We must not cull any more blossoms from this wilderness of sweets, for our limits admonish us to desist from so fascinating an occupation. Mr. Burges, we trust, will be encouraged by the success of his drama to out-do Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Otway; not indeed by soaring above them, but by winging a downward and not less daring flight, far beyond the vulgar boundaries of sense and nature, into the illimitable regions of absurdity.

Mr. Barker is a zealous champion for the Greeks, but the plan of his publication renders it an unfit subject of critical notice. It may be intitled Tractatus de Græcis rebus et quibusdam aliis; for it is a most motley though well-intended collection from tracts, news-papers, and sermons, of all that has been said on the affairs of Greece, and something more. The author's name, indeed, appears in the title-page, but he is in fact only an editor. The Courier, the Times, the Norwich and Bury Post, the Sheffield Iris, the greater part of Lord Chatham's speech in the House of Lords on the American war, Smollett's History of England, Curran's speech for Hamilton Rowan, Sheridan's Thoughts on the Greek Revolution, Seed's Sermons, and a long list of et cætera, not to forget several extensive and eloquent passages from a tract lately published by Mr. Hall of Leicester, one of the most ardent advocates of Greece, and one of the best writers of the day; these constitute the work. We need not, therefore, apologize for not entering into a regular review of such a compilation; contenting ourselves with citing the admirable peroration of Mr. Hall's pamphlet, intitled Sentiments proper to the present Crisis.

you are

Go then, ye defenders of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, where God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success, not to lend you her aid; she will shed over this enterprise her selected influence. While engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer, which has power with God; the feeble hands, which are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the spirit; and from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to Heaven with the shouts of battle, and the shock of arms. And thou, sole Ruler among the children of men, to whom the shields" of the earth belong, gird on thy sword, thou most Mighty! go forth with HOTOD 2ish; ni w 69 6972 sd biotheir