opposition. He sees aristocracy in every thing; aristocracy of birth, of office, even of talent. This system is negative, or would introduce despotism and mobocracy. But the majority of readers do not foresee its consequences. The pamphlet makes a fierce attack upon the opposition of the chamber of nobles, as well as upon that of the journals. The parliamentary opposition, says Mr. Jan Jansson (pseudonymous author of the pamphlet), is composed only of disguised aristocrats, veiling their own interests under the mask of liberty; they are secretly in concert with the government, and their opposition is only a comedy more or less skilfully played. In this Mr. Jan Jansson is decidedly in the wrong; for the members of the opposition are, for the most part, dupes rather than dupers, and they engage in their cause with the best faith possible. It is particularly to the opposition of the periodical press that the author bears a grudge; he treats the journalists as blockheads and idiots. With us, when a writer is seen to attack all parties he is supposed superior to the miserable tricks of his cotemporaries, and is admired, as a transcendent mind. Mr. Jan Jansson, while he deals his blows among the opposition, does not spare the ministry. The Argus, a journal which the author has treated gently enough, maintains that he is perfectly right in all he says. The ministerial paper, the Fadernesland, highly extols the tirade directed against the opposition, while it disparages the attack upon the ministry. Thus Mr. Jan Jansson's book, like an incendiary squib, has set on fire all those who write for, against, or upon, public affairs. In this general affray, the great mass of the public, not knowing to which to give implicit credit, is in a state of no small embarrassment.

It was written in the stars that this half-year should be a disastrous epoch to the Swedish press, as will presently appear. The Medborgaren, an opposition paper, offered a prize of fifty ducats for the best dissertation on political economy. The compositions came, but not so the assignment of the prize. It is well known, that throughout Europe, the ultra-liberal are not the ultra-wealthy. The Swedish journalists proved this, by not giving the prize which they had promised. One of the competitors, tired of waiting so long, complained in the Argus, threatened the intervention of the tribunals, and finally effected the assignment. The Medborgaren lost the greater part of its subscribers in consequence of this affair, and by reason of its predilection for the doctrines of Saint-Simon. LieutenantColonel Hierta, editor of this journal, abjured, so to speak, his Saint-Simonian errors in a recanting article; but, a short time after, an indiscretion on the part of a French journal, The Globe, informed us that Mr. Hierta was still a faithful partisan of father Enfantin and company.

Mr. Hierta's younger brother is editor of the Aftonbladet, a kind of scandalous chronicle, containing piquant and witty stories, not seldom untrue, about a multitude of persons and various subjects. He has already been frequently summoned before the tribunals to answer for his false assertions. He one day accused of negligence the cordon sanitaire, which, he said, had allowed a ship to enter the port of Stockholm, without requiring it to submit to quarantine. The board of health proved before the tribunals

that the imputation was unfounded. At another time, he came near causing an uproar in Stockholm, by asserting, on the authority of some absurd stories, that two of the public fountains had been poisoned. The water of these fountains was analysed, and this statement also proved flagrantly false.

The liberal journals accuse the Argus of having become ministerial, in other words, of having adopted, in politics, the just mean (juste milieu). In fact, liberalism has lost ground in Sweden, and people are somewhat disgusted with the leaders of the party. — When the Swedish press treats any grave and important subject, the Aftonbladet does but skim over the surface; the Argus alone embraces it in its full extent, and puts forth new and sometimes luminous ideas.

In literature, properly so called, Tégner has distinguished himself, a poet and prose-writer, full of warmth and imagination, always aiming at a flowery and brilliant style. The dissertations of the Swedish Academy still retain the faults which have so long been charged upon all the academies of Europe, the principal of which is, the constant sacrifice of substance to form. Mr. Fryxell has, however, succeeded in avoiding this fault in his picture of the epoch from 1592 to 1600, in which he exhibits to us the principal personages who then figured in Sweden. The romance, entitled: "Sketches of Daily life" (Tekningar af Hvardagslifvet), has enjoyed a success hitherto unheard of in the annals of Swedish literature. And it has not wanted imitators. The young poet Ruda, favorably known by his works, has published the little romance of the "Stranger from the North" (Framlingen fran Norden). The characters are not sufficiently marked, and the plot wants originality; but the style is full of freshness and ease. The academicien Franzén has written an epic, or rather a historical poem, entitled, "Columbus, or the Discovery of America" (Columbus, eller Amerikas upptäckt). This subject is not treated in the trite and monotonous style of ancient and modern epics; it is the simple and flowing style of conversation. And can there be a subject more essentially poetical than the life of Christopher Columbus? The work not being yet finished, we suspend our definitive judgment. Mr. Franzén has been lately appointed Bishop of Hornesand; Sweden possesses, at this moment, four prelate-poets, Wallin, Tégner, Kullberg, and Franzén. Miss Euphrosyne is the author of some poetical pieces of great beauty and simplicity, which have been much admired in Sweden. The school of Byron, and the French romantic school have numerous partisans in that country. Some poets, and among them some of the most distinguished, publish annually, about Christmas, a kind of Almanac of the Muses, entitled "Winterblommor " (Flowers of Winter).

CRITICAL NOTICES.

[From "The Quarterly Review, No. 97."]

ART. I. The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley, now first collected. With Notes by the late William Gifford, Esq.; and additional Notes, and some Account of Shirley and his Writings, by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. 6 vols. London, 1832.

SHIRLEY at length takes his place among the poets of England. His collected works are, for the first time, within the reach of the common reader. A few years ago these volumes would have excited more general interest, and stood a chance of more extensive popularity. The admiration of our older dramatists was then at its height. The wonder and delight raised by a vein of poetry so rich and so deep, almost suddenly disclosed, tempted the public mind to imagine that its wealth was inexhaustible, and, in the fresh ardor of enthusiasm, it refused to suspect that much dross might be mingled with the precious metal. The strong excitement, in those days, perpetually administered by modern poetry, kept the popular taste in a state prepared, and wrought up, as it were, to receive with pleasure the force, the passionate vehemence, the splendid imagery of our ancient theatre. Most of the successful poets then living were professed admirers, some avowed imitators, of the Elizabethan dramatists. They seemed to demand, and obtained a favorable hearing for their masters in the art.

If latterly this ardor of the public mind has sunk into comparative apathy, and its curiosity languished into indifference, we are not inclined altogether to ascribe this defection from the objects of brief idolatry to its general inconstancy: the blame must be borne, at least in an equal share, by the injudicious panegyrists of our older poets. Of these some had but a cold, an antiquarian, or a bibliomaniac passion for these neglected writers; they loved, not their invention, their poetry, their character, but their rarity; their admiration rose and fell, not with the kindling of their imagination, or the thrilling of their inmost heart, but with the anxiously-watched vibrations of Mr. Sotheby's or Mr. Evans's hammer; their principles of taste were on the margin of a Roxburghe catalogue, and inestimable must be the merit of that drama which was not to be found in the Malone or the Garrick collection. But this was innocent in comparison with the patronage of another class, by which the older dramatists were incumbered. These were a certain race of writers, with little knowledge of the ancient drama, and less discrimination as to real excellencies, professed admirers 22 +

VOL. II. NO. II.

its

of poetry, but egregious admirers of themselves, who seized upon these slumbering worthies, as subjects for showy and epigrammatic essays, in which the public attention was invited, less to the long-neglected genius of the dead, than to the profound and original principles of taste developed by the living. Some of them took possession of the ground, as it were, by a pretended right of discovery; and it became an object of competition to force into notice some name, whose merit had been a secret even to the initiated. In the mean time the authority of the more sound and judicious admirers of the old drama, such as the late Mr. Gifford and Mr. Lamb,- (men, perhaps, as opposite in the character of their minds, as two so highly gifted and accomplished could be, but who met upon this common ground), their ripe and sober judgment was overborne by the louder and more extravagant praises lavished with equal profusion upon the humbler and the better part of this remarkable school. The reaction took place; the public taste, wearied with these incessant demands on its approbation, unable to admire in the mass, as it was authoritatively required to do, that which, in most cases, is only excellent in particular passages; neither inclined, nor scarcely permitted, to make the necessary allowance for the dif ference of manners, or for the irregularities of writers, who, if the most vigorous, amusing, and various, are, unquestionably, the most unequal, gradually fell off in its encouragement, and left the field to those whose not less fervent, though more discriminating love of our older poetry, maintained its fidelity. These, as they had been earlier, so they were more lasting votaries; as uninfluenced by the excitement, so superior to the capriciousness of popular admiration.

In the mean time great advantages had been derived from the impulse given to the public taste. Excellent editions of the better, and even some of the inferior, of these old poets had been published. Men who, like Mr. Collier and Mr. Dyce, united the patient industry of the antiquarian with a real, yet chastened feeling for the beauties of their authors, have continued to work on with unwearied assiduity, though with less hope of reward from the general interest in their studies. The present edition of Shirley, commenced, and almost finished, as to the collection and the arrangement of the plays, by Mr. Gifford, and now completed by the addition of the poems, and a life, by Mr. Dyce, closes that prolific but brilliant series of our dramatic authors, without which no library, which pretends to comprehend the more valuable body of English poetic literature, can be considered perfect.

Shirley was the "last minstrel " of the early English etage. In him expired what may be properly called the school of Shakspeare. Like our northern poet's "last of all the bards," or, as he was called by one of his contemporaries, "the last supporter of the dying scene," after enjoying some years of fame and popularity, Shirley found himself fallen upon an ungenial time, on days in

which his art could obtain but little audience. Before his career was half run, his occupation was proscribed; and at the Restoration, the lineal descendant of Fletcher and Massinger saw a new art take possession of the stage. He was a stranger among the race of poets who sprung up around him, he belonged to another age; some of his plays, as well as those of his great masters, Shakspeare and Fletcher, were indeed revived, but the rhyming heroic tragedy, and the profligate comedy of intrigue, were in the ascendant, and Shirley stood aloof. Conscious, as it were, that he belonged to a departed generation, that he had nothing in common with the popular playwrights of the modern era, he refused to become a pupil in the new, the degenerate school, and thus to form as he might, the link between the romantic and that which called itself the heroic drama. Hence the civil wars draw a complete line of demarcation between two periods of dramatic art.

Even if it had not thus come to a violent end, the Shakspearian drama might have yielded to that more slow and secret principle of change which seems to operate upon taste, as upon every thing else connected with our mortal state; at this period, however, its fate was inevitable. Unless the drama could have taken higher ground, unless, from an amusement it could have become a political power, an engine by which one of the conflicting parties could strongly work upon the opinions of men, it could not but become extinct. Even Shakspeare himself, in such days of tumult and fierce collision, would scarcely have commanded a hearing It needed not the ponderous anathema of Prynne, nor the stern edict of the Puritanical Parliament, to wean the popular taste from that languishing stage, which, for its few last years, was only supported as a faithful adherent of royalty, by the more indolent and careless cavaliers. The public mind was too serious for diversion; a real tragic drama was now darkening over the kingdom, and its still-impending catastrophe held the whole nation. in breathless suspense. Characters were developing, in more striking and vivid colors than Shakspeare himself could have drawn; incidents, which had all the strange and stirring novelty of the boldest fiction, with the tremendous force of truth, were coming home to the hearths, to the bosoms of men. What, at such a time, was the fiction, the dream of passion"?

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"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"

Who would go to witness the imaginary "Politician" of the dramatist, when he might watch the unravelling of the great plot in either House of Parliament? who listen to the hired actor at the Globe or the Cockpit, when he could see the Pyms and the Hampdens, the Hydes and the Falklands on that spirit-stirring stage? Even the apprentices had more animating work than in the galleries of the theatres, in themselves learning to take a part, by hooting down bishops, or malignants, in the tragedies of the day,