laudable feeling. So far from calling up disagreeable recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph, by their natural energy, over those false and fastidious distinctions which the mind is but too apt to form in allotting its sympathies to the sensibilities of the rich and poor. He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, to make us enter into their passions and interests, and share our hearts with them as with brothers and sisters of the human species. He is taxed, in the same place, with perpetually affecting to deride the virtues of prudence, regularity, and decency; and with being imbued with the sentimentality of German novels. Anything more remote from German sentiment than Burns's poetry could not easily be mentioned. But is he depraved and licentious in a comprehensive view of the moral character of his pieces? The over-genial freedom of a few assuredly ought not to fix this character upon the whole of them. It is a charge which we should hardly expect to see preferred against the author of The Cotter's Saturday Night.' He is the enemy, indeed, of that selfish and niggardly spirit which shelters itself under the name of prudence; but that pharisaical disposition has seldom been a favourite with poets. Nor should his maxims, which inculcate charity and candour in judging of human frailties, be interpreted as a serious defence of them, as when he says, "Then gently scan your brother man, Though they may gang a kennin wrang; "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, It is still more surprising that a critic, capable of so eloquently developing the traits of Burns's genius, should have found fault with his amatory strains for want of polish, and "of that chivalrous tone of gallantry which uniformly abases itself in the presence of the object of its devotion." Every reader must recall abundance of thoughts in his love-songs, to which any attempt to superadd a tone of gallantry would not be "To gild refined gold, to paint the rose, but to debase the metal, and to take the odour and colour from the flower. It is exactly this superiority to "abasement" and polish which is the charm that distinguishes Burns from the herd of erotic songsters, from the days of the troubadours to the present time. He wrote from impulses more sincere than the spirit of chivalry; and even Lord Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney are cold and uninteresting lovers in comparison with the rustic Burns. The praises of his best pieces I have abstained from re-echoing, as there is no epithet of admiration which they deserve which has not been bestowed upon them. One point must be conceded to the strictures on his poetry to which I have already alluded,— that his personal satire was fierce and acrimonious. I am not, however, disposed to consider his attacks on Rumble John and Holy Willie as destitute of wit; and his poem on the clerical settlements at Kilmarnock blends a good deal of ingenious metaphor with his accustomed humour. Even viewing him as a satirist, the last and humblest light in which he can be regarded as a poet, it may still be said of him, "His style was witty, though it had some gall; WILLIAM MASON. [Born, 1725. Died, 1797.] WILLIAM MASON was the son of the vicar of St. Trinity, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was entered of St. John's College, Cambridge, in his eighteenth year, having already, as he informs us, blended some attention to painting and poetry with his youthful studies: 66 Soon my hand the mimic colours spread, From Fame's unfading laurels."—English Garden, b. i. To throw a perfume on the violet. King John, act iv. scene ii. A great poet quoting another should be correct.-Byron, Works, vol. xvi. p. 124.] the death of Pope, which was published in 1747.* Two years afterwards he obtained his degree of master of arts, and a fellowship of Pembroke Hall. For his fellowship he was indebted to the interest of Gray, whose acquaintance with him was intimate and lasting, and who describes him, at Cambridge, as a young man of much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty ; in simplicity a child, a little vain, but sincere, inoffensive, and indolent. At a later period of his life, Thomas Warton gave him the very opposite character of a "buckram man.” He was early attached to Whig principles, and wrote his poem of Isis,' as an attack on the Jacobitism of Oxford. When Thomas Warton produced his Triumph of Isis,' in reply, the two poets had the liberality to compliment the productions of each other; nor were their rival strains much worthy of mutual envy. But Mason, though he was above envy, could not detach his vanity from the subject. One evening, on entering Oxford with a friend, he expressed his happiness that it was dark. His friend not perceiving any advantage in the circumstance, "What!" said Mason, "don't you remember 'Isis'? my In 1753 he published his Elfrida,' in which the chorus is introduced after the model of the Greek drama. The general unsuitableness of that venerable appendage of the ancient theatre for the modern stage seems to be little disputed.† The two predominent features of the Greek chorus were, its music and its abstract morality. Its musical character could not be revived, unless the science of music were by some miracle to be made a thousand years younger, and unless modern ears were restored to a taste for its youthful simplicity. If music were as freely mixed with our tragedy as with that of Greece, the effect would speedily be, to make harmony predominate over words, sound over sense, as * [In one of his first poems Mason had, in a puerile fiction, ranked Chaucer and Spenser and Milton below Pope, which is like comparing a garden shrub with the oaks of the forest. But he would have maintained no such absurdity in his riper years, for Mason lived to perceive and correct both his errors of opinion and his faults of style.-Southey, Cowper, vol. ii. p. 177.] [The ancients were perpetually confined and hampered by the necessity of using the chorus: and if they have done wonders notwithstanding this clog, sure I am they would have performed still greater wonders without it. -Gray. Remarks on Elfrida.' Works by Mitford, vol. iv. p. 2. It is impossible to conceive that Phædra trusted her incestuous passion, or Medea her murderous revenge, to a whole troop of attendants.-Hor. Walpole. Royal and Noble Authors.] in modern operas, and the result would be, not a resemblance to the drama of Greece, but a thing as opposite to it as possible. The moral use of the ancient chorus is also superseded by the nature of modern dramatic imitation, which incorporates sentiment and reflection so freely with the speeches of the represented characters as to need no suspension of the dialogue for the sake of lyrical bursts of morality or religious invocation. The chorus was the oldest part of Greek tragedy; and though Mr. Schlegel has rejected the idea of its having owed its preservation on the Greek stage to its antiquity, I cannot help thinking that that circumstance was partly the cause of its preservation. Certainly the Greek drama, having sprung from a choral origin, would always retain a character congenial with the chorus. The Greek drama preserved a religious and highly rhythmical character. It took its rise from a popular solemnity, and continued to exhibit the public, as it were, personified in a distinct character upon the stage. In this circumstance we may perhaps recognise a trait of the democratic spirit of Athenian manners, which delighted to give the impartial spectators a sort of image and representative voice upon the stage. Music was then simple; the dramatic representation of character and action, though bold, was simple; and this simplicity left on the ancient stage a space for the chorus, which it could not obtain (permanently) on that of the moderns. Our music is so complicated, that when it is allied with words it overwhelms our attention to words. Again, the Greek drama gave strong and decisive outlines of character and passion, but not their minute shadings; our drama gives all the play of moral physiognomy. The great and awful characters of a Greek tragedy spoke in pithy texts, without commentaries of sentiment; while the flexible eloquence of the moderns supplies both text and commentary. Every moral feeling, calm or tumultuous, is expressed in our soliloquies *Mr. Schlegel alludes to the tradition of Sophocles having written a prose defence of the chorus against the objections of contemporaries who blamed his continuance of it. Admitting this tradition, what does it prove? Sophocles found the chorus in his native drama, and no doubt found the genius of that drama congenial with the chorus from which it had sprung. In the opinion of the great German critic, he used the chorus, not from regard to habit, but principle. But have not many persons of the highest genius defended customs on the score of principle, to which they were secretly, perhaps unconsciously, attached from the power of habit? Custom is, in fact, stronger than principle. or dialogues. The Greeks made up for the want of soliloquy, and for the short simplicity of their dialogue, which often consisted in interchanges of single lines, by choral speeches, which commented on the passing action, explained occurring motives, and soothed or deepened the moral impressions arising out of the piece. With us everything is different. The dramatic character is brought, both physically and morally, so much nearer to our perception, with all its fluctuating motives and feelings, as to render it as unnecessary to have interpreters of sentiment or motives, such as the chorus, to magnify, or soothe, or prolong our moral impressions, as to have buskins to increase the size, or brazen vases to reverberate the voice, of the speaker. Nor has the mind any preparation for such juries of reflectors, and processions of confidential advisers. There is, however, no rule without a possible exception. To make the chorus an habitual part of the modern drama would be a chimerical attempt. There are few subjects in which every part of a plot may not be fulfilled by individuals. Yet it is easy to conceive a subject in which it may be required, or at least desirable, to incorporate a group of individuals under one common part. And where this grouping shall arise, not capriciously, but necessarily out of the nature of the subject, our minds will not be offended by the circumstance, but will thank the dramatist for an agreeable novelty. In order to reconcile us, however, to this plural personage, or chorus, it is necessary that the individuals composing it should be knit not only by a natural but dignified coalition. The group, in fact, will scarcely please or interest the imagination unless it has a solemn or interesting community of character. Such are the Druids in 'Caractacus ;' and, perhaps, the chorus of Israelites in Racine's' Esther.' In such a case even a modern audience would be likely to suspend their love of artificial harmony, and to listen with delight to simple music and choral poetry, where the words were not drowned in the music. At all events, there would exist a fair apology for introducing a chorus, from the natural and imposing bond of unity belonging to the group. But this apology will by no means apply to the tragedy of' Elfrida.' The chorus is there composed of persons who have no other community of character than their being the waiting-women of a baroness. They are too unimportant personages to be a chorus. They have no right |