BIOGRAPHY but seldom selects its ornaments from the gentler sex. Women are devoted as much by nature as custom to the domestic duties. Their merits are to be felt in their homes and in their offspring; if the former be well ordered, and the latter well bred, the charm of both may without hesitation be ascribed to the mistress and the mother. The wide range of male ambition but rarely tempts the modest reserve of our females. The hereditary principle, so startling in theory, so salutary in its results, has sometimes placed our women upon the throne; and their wisdom or their virtue (gallantry, perhaps morals, would combine the terms) commonly rendered their reigns memorable, not only for the doubtful advantages of conquest, but the solid triumph in the happiness of their people. The display of the beauty and the accomplishments of the sex in a station so exalted has seldom, I think, been viewed with envy :-yet in the walks of literature the female is distinguished with rather unwilling admiration. She who yields to a powerful impulse, and indulges either her fancy or her wit, with difficulty escapes from the reproach of pedantry; and is suspected to resign, for literary distinction, much of her proper charm, that graceful modesty, which retires from even praise itself too vehemently pronounced. She is, therefore, generally contented to abstain from many subjects perfectly suited to her power, and allows to the bolder sex the mental ascendancy which might A frequently admit of dispute, and not seldom admits indeed of no dispute.1 The progress of refinement has thrown the stage open to a competition of the two sexes, and often inscribed a female name in the highest rank of theatrical merit. The author of The Sublime and Beautiful has found no difficulty in commemorating Mrs. Siddons even with Garrick himself. The But this field of competition in mimetic excellence was opened to the ladies by growing laxity of manners. greatest period of the English drama witnessed no female performer on a public stage. We were indebted to the recall of the Stuarts for abolishing the absurdity of constituting boys the representatives of female character. But a great deal was to be done before the timid and puritanic manners of the previous age could endure, much less sustain, the public exposure of the sex. The example of the court at length relaxed the general manners of the people, and virtue became an unheeded sacrifice, after the exterior guards of decorum were removed. To sit through the indecencies of the modern comedy became a favourite pastime; and some were found capable of hearing them without a mask. The actresses of that day were usually the avowed mistresses of profligate courtiers, and supported unabashed, and with infinite gaiety, their full share in the impure colloquies of the drama. In truth there has at all times been rather a close alliance of this nature between the parties here alluded to. And if it were not a fact, it would be an elegant symbol, when it is said of Pompey's Theatre, ' that the seats of the spectators were the steps to the temple of Venus.' Thus the first exposure of the person was accompanied by the attendant corruption of the mind; and the lesson of loose feeling was delivered, by the applauded wanton of the stage, to the ears of youthful inexperience, and awakened passion. At all events the mask would conceal alike the rising blushes, or the want of them. 1 On this subject, Dr. Fiddes laments that there should be no foundations for the female sex- Which,' says he, 'allowing to them the same advantage of education as men, would certainly be equal to them, if not in the strength of their min ls, yet in the beauty and delicacy of their thoughts and in several of the more liberal and polite parts of learning, would make a readier progress, and probably arrive at length to a greater perfection than is common to men.'-Life of Wolsey, p. 114. The British Juvenal touched this 'smiling mischief' with his venerable hand, and devoted it to scorn or to oblivion: "For Shame regain'd the post by sense betray'd, With the growing purity of the stage, a corresponding delicacy, or at least decency, was observable in its professors. A woman of virtue might there be found, however greatly admired; and a bold and caustic satirist1 at least amended what his avowed object was to destroy. The ingenuous Dryden bowed at his reproof, and perhaps struggled after purer composition. The improvement of manners to which I have alluded was favourable to the female professors of the stage. They changed the sex of their patrons, and were frequently received in the best society. All the refinements of rank and education were open to their remark and to their imitation. They soon dropped the swelling pretensions of the princess for the gentle grace of modest, but reflecting, virtue. The authors followed in the train of society, which they ought always to have conducted, and disdained any longer to pollute their scenes with the open avowal of female dishonour. But, as comedy was thus interdicted the daring stratagems of vice, and many of the dilemmas to which they conducted, so it lost the gay flutter of wit, by which a set of specious but loose manners was rendered often triumphant and always dangerous. Yet interest in the drama was necessarily to be found, and instead of unmasking the base and punishing the profligate, the new school precipitated the innocent into unmerited distress and, having through four acts wound calamity about the heroine as a garment, employed a scene or two of the fifth in natural or unnatural expedients of relief, and some times exceeded even the demands of tragedy in the tears excited by repentance or magnanimity. There is hardly to be found in the history of human taste a change so rapid and entire as appeared in the thirty years which elapsed between the composition of The Double Dealer of Congreve and The Conscious Lovers of Steele. 1 Collier. The Lady Touchwood of Congreve is a Messalina, whose avowed profligacy (for she talks of her own dishonour to Maskwell) is not even lowered to the use of comedy by becoming ridiculous. I say to the use of comedy, because perhaps at a certain age the tender passion entertained for improper objects, viewed as a folly rather than a crime, may become the lawful prey of the comic muse. But unless thus covered with ridicule as unsuited to the parties, it should never be exhibited on the stage, merely because the poetic justice of the catastrophe punishes it as immoral. The indecency of such an interest should banish it from every well regulated play-house. The grosser vices of our natures may sometimes form subjects for the tragic muse; and they then need every artifice of the poet to keep them from exciting disgust instead of dread. It is for this reason that Phedra, as a subject, is banished from the English stage, though tolerated upon the French. I am happy, in estimating the comparative purity of the two nations, to give the palm of virtue to the audiences of my own country. In the case of Phedra, the French, in compliment to the Greek Euripides or their own, while there can be found an actress to sustain the character, will continue to endure the display of an incestuous love. It should be remembered here, that they do so without the palliative of Greek fatalism. The displeasure of a Deity towards a particular race devoted its members to a long succession of inevitable crimes. An Athenian audience, in full assent to this feeling, saw the guilt of Edipus and Phedra and Orestes with a measure of pity, which in ourselves it cannot excite. As we approach to the stage of our own times, it may readily be imagined that its purity would not at all suffer under the direction of Mr. Garrick. Himself the greatest of all actors, he would naturally turn in the first instance to the compositions best suited to his own powers. To be her universal representative was conferred upon him by nature; and he discovered in the page of Shakespeare the only inspiration adequate to his talents. If nature wrote through Shakespeare, the poet in his turn spoke best through Garrick. By this it is not meant that an occasional passage, 1 Racine-Compare him particularly in the Phèdre and Iphigénie. |