"First, that the continental monarchies of Europe require complete regeneration before their subjects can become virtuous and happy. Second, that the Government of England is not to be included in this class; for that it is calculated to produce liberty, worth, and content amongst the people, while its abuses easily admit of reforms consist-lic ent with its spirit, capable of being effected without injury or danger, and mainly contributing to its preservation." It is, however, with the latter of the neglected truths in question that the present volume deals. The first not being finished, we have therefore the second volume first, a kind of "Sorεpov porεpov" process which we should have thought fatal to the argument except in the hands of an Irish chronicler. The reason why this latter portion is thus prematurely published "without sufficient concoction or correction, is to be attributed to the vanity of imagining it may at this period be of some service. It may at least provoke the wils and excite the thoughts of other men to a more happy attention, in which every member of this free community has an interest of the deepest importance." 66 It is not our design to combat the doctrine of monarchical regeneration, which the noble lord insists upon, in foreign lands, before the population can become a happy and virtuous one, since a quarter of a century has not only changed much abroad, but much at home; and amongst other things which have undergone mutation, Lord John's opinions are not the least remarkable. For our own part, with all his freedom, we fear that John Bull is not much more virtuous than the Austrian or the Dutchman, and rather incline to the opinion that he is less happy. Whether this "pellet" from Lord John's literary popgun provoked the wit" or "excited the thoughts" of Prince Metternich, and other quondam important personages, or whether it failed to do so from want of the "concoction" so herbalistically lamented, must remain an unsolved problem until the late Arch-Chancellor of Austria's memoirs are given to the world. If it failed in awakening foreign governments to the importance of completely regenerating their systems, perhaps "it did not fail in being of some service," that is, to the noble author himself; for though he was too modest to say so, he alone can supply the information as to who was the object of such service. That the essay, or rather collection of essays, was intended as an advertisement of the noble lord's political creed, no one can doubt, who reads the ninety-one chapters into which the said volume, of 305 pages, is divided. Besides dissertations upon the lives and governments of the successive sovereigns, from Henry VII. to George III., we have the Press,"" "Poor Laws," "National Debt," "Liberty of Parliamentary Reform,' 'Pub"Criminal Law," "Influence of Schools," the Crown," and a sufficiently piquant and diversified "bill of fare." At the head of each chapter is placed a quotation from some celebrated writer, as a kind of text upon which the noble lord spins his discourse. And at the tail we find some aphoristic deduction, enunciating the author's political notions. We shall pass by the introductory chapter on the first principles of the English government and constitution, for it is neither more nor less than Blackstone mystified, and shown up in masquerade. The pith or climax, which, as in a lady's letter, is to be found in the postscript, though not remarkable for elegance of expression, explains the old tinkering propensities of Lord John to mend the constitutional kettle; but would provoke a severe comment upon his more recent doctrine of finality, and the stationary policy of his administration at the present crisis. "There was a practical wisdom in our ancestors, which induced them to alter and vary the form of our institutions as they went on; to suit them to the circumstances of the time, and reform them according to the dictates of experience. They never ceased to work upon our frame of government, as a sculptor fashions the model of a favorite statue. It is an act now seldom used, and the disuse has been attended with evils of the most alarming magnitude." cussion of the political character of Lord Our present object, however, is not a disJohn Russell; we confine ourselves to his position as un homme de lettres. [Liberty of the Press.] "Before I proceed to give a short view of the advantages of the Press, let us again recall to our minds that it is nonsense to talk of liberty without its licentiousness. Every attempt to curb its licentiousness otherwise than by the application of the law after an erty. To do the one without the other, were as difficult as to provide that the sun should bring our flowers and fruits to perfection, but never scorch our faces. Many have a mistaken notion of what the Press is: they suppose it to be a regular independent power, like the Crown, or the House of Commons. The Press does nothing more than afford a means of expressing, in good and able language, the opinions of large classes of socieare paradoxes confined to the individual who uty. For if these opinions, however well sustained, ters them, they fall as harmless, in the middle of offence committed, must likewise restrain its lib sixteen millions of people, as they would do in a private party of three or four. Nor is it the sentiment of A, the editor of one newspaper, or of B, the editor of another, which controls the course of Government. These men are little, if it all, known; with one or two exceptions, their names are never mentioned. It is their skill in embodying in a daily journal the feelings and reasonings which come home to the business and the bosoms of large portions of their countrymen, that obtains for their writings fame and general acceptance. But it would be vain for these persons to endeavor to make the people discontented with laws which they loved and a minister whom they revered. They would not be dreaded nor even read. Equally vain would it be for a vicious, oppressive, and odious government to suppress the liberty of printing. It was not the Press which overturned Charles I., nor could the Inquisition preserve to Ferdinand VIII. his despotic power-the dark cabal, the secret conspirator, the sudden tumult, the solitary assassin, may all be found where the liberty of printing has never existed. And were a government to suppress it where it does exist, without taking away the matter of sedition, more crime and less security would probably be the result of their foolish panic and powerless precaution. No one has yet seen the newspaper or pamphlet, which openly defends the venality of judges or the infliction of torture, any more than the tragedy which holds up cowardice to admiration, or endeavors to make envy amiable in our eyes; even the worst men love virtue in their studies. In ordinary times it is evident the exercise of this censorship must be beneficial to the country; no statesman can hope that his corrupt practices, his jobs, his obliquities, his tergiversations, can escape from a vigilance that never slumbers, and an industry that never wearies. Nor is it an important obstacle to truth, that the daily newspapers are the advocates of party, rather than searchers after truth. The nation, after hearing both sides, may decide between them." [The National Debt.] "There can be little doubt that, for a certain time, a national debt is beneficial in its effects. It promotes a rapid circulation of money; it brings new capitalists into the market with more enterprise and more invention than the old proprietors of land. It obliges the laborer to work harder, and, at the same time, produces new demands for labor. But when the national taxes have increased to a certain amount, these effects are nearly reversed. Prices are so prodigiously increased to the consumer, that all prudent men retrench both their consumption and their employment of labor. The greater proportion of the general income of the country, is transferred from the hands of men who have the means of laying it out in agriculture or manufac tures, into the hands of great merchants, whose capital overflows the market, and returns in the shape of mortgages. There is, at the same time, a great want of and great abundance of money. Such are the effects of a great national debt upon individuals. But there is another view in which | this debt is an unmixed evil; I mean, as it impairs and exhausts the resources of the State. The expense of former wars renders it at last difficult for a nation to raise taxes for its defence. So much of the rent of the landholder is taken from him, that the minister dares not ask for more, as it would be equivalent to the confiscation of the land itself." The premier here digresses into a retrospect of various epochs of distress; commends the corn laws, as preventing the abandonment of agriculture in England; reviews the monetary crisis of 1813, and takes occasion to eulogize a nostrum of Lord Lauderdale, that guineas should be coined of the value of the twenty-one shillings paper currency, a proceeding his lordship seems to think very highly of. have had reason to bless the day on which "Perhaps the fundholder would such a measure was adopted, for it would have retarded the period which, some time or other, will in all probability arrive, when the payment of the full dividend, and the safety of the State, shall be found incompatible." In a second edition, enlarged, we find a rather long dissertation on the sources of patronage in the crown. The bar and the church both get roughly handled. [The Bar.] "It is the tendency of this profession to give men a rooted attachment to the institutions by whose rules all their decisions are made. But their attachment, it must be confessed, is seldom of a very discriminating nature. And if, on the one hand, they kindle with indignation when the ancient rights of the people are trampled upon, on the other, they fire with almost equal zeal if an attempt is made to moderate the cruel spirit of ancient legislation. Generally speaking, however, the first disposition of a lawyer, it must be confessed, is to inquire boldly and argue sharply upon public abuses. They are not apt to indulge any bigoted reverence for the depositaries of power; and, on the other hand, they value liberty as the guardian of free speech. But the close of a lawyer's life is not always conformable to his outset. [Is a premier's?] Many who commence by too warm an admiration for popular privileges, end by too frigid a contempt for all tongues for the hour, and by a natural transition they enthusiasm. They are accustomed to let their sell them for a term of years, or for life. Commencing with the vanity of popular harangues, they end by the meanest calculations of avarice." The bar must feel flattered by Lord John Russell's exposition of a barrister's career. The noble premier has, however, painted a portrait of the divine in not much more pleasing colors. [The Church.] "The church has not to reproach itself with the same tergiversation in its members, [ministers ?] Connected with power and office by their very profession, all members (ministers) of the church have an original tendency, not easily overcome, to take the side of Government, and those who desire to rise to distinction in the hierarchy generally make a display of servility, as the surest means of elevation. Or if raised BY SOME RARE ACCIDENT from real merit, super-add a varnish of adulation to their other acquirements. Yet it must be said that a cringing churchman has not that scoffing contempt of virtue and affected disbelief of all public principle which distinguish the apostate lawyer." Though these essays will not tend much, if at all, to establish the noble author's reputation as a literary man, it had been better had he confined his efforts to this species of composition exclusively for though it demands many high qualifications, not the least of which is the faculty of compression, "to give the virtue of a draught in a few drops," the task is far easier than the one which belongs to the elevated flights of the dramatic aspirant. Don Carlos, a Success is the mother of Tragedy. rashness, and though often a diminutive parent, the infant is commonly remarkable for its size. The success of the noble lord as an essayist, whether as Joseph Skillet, or in his own proper person, if we can form any opinion, must have been of the most limited kind; but the rashness engen dered was as colossal as the success was mi croscopic, and bears out the epigrammatic character of the premier so felicitously hit off by a defunct canon of St. Paul's, for wit renowned. Dr. Johnson declares, "that a man who writes a book thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he sup; poses that he can instruct or amuse them;" but a man who writes a play must have a still higher estimate of his powers, if we receive the opinion of his Grace of Bucking ham: "That to write plays, why, 'tis a bold pretence To judgment, breeding, wit, and eloquence; Nay more, for they must look within to find The secret turn of nature in the mind." The hardihood of the venture in the present instance is not a little heightened by the circumstance that the story of Don Carlos had already exercised the skill of the most celebrated dramatic writers, not forgetting Schiller and Alfieri. And this in defiance of the highest critical authorities, who condemn the selection of the unhallowed perversions of one particular passion for the source of dra matic interest as unworthy of genius, and resorted to only by men of puny and sterile imagination, though by genius alone can such exhibitions be made sufferable. How far Lord John's treatment of the story redeems the play from the strictures of this canon we shall inquire. Schiller more modestly styled his work a dramatic poem, and declared that his hopes of its success on any stage were not high. Here it is ushered in with all the pride and pomp of circumstance, "A Tragedy in Five Ac's," entitled "Don Carlos, or Persecution." The alternative, or explanatory title, must, we are convinced, have been inserted at the recommendation of some waggish friend of the author, alluding to the reader, or intended audience of Covent Garden. It is dedicated to Lord Holland, in the usual strain of mixed adulation and depreciation, rather at variance with the preface, which savors strongly of the puff preparatory, and in which there is an affectation of research, and a careful apology for slight historical deviations on the score of poetical license. We shall in a few lines explain the nature of the plot; since, though " Don Carlos" may works of Schiller and Alfieri, it has not been be familiar to those acquainted with the made so through Lord John Russell to the of noble authorship, and all the knavish English reader for with all the prestige adjuncts of the stage, ("Fourberia della Scena,") the play was acted once, and once only. Not that its failure as an acting drama would be conclusive against its merit altogether, for Johnson's Irene" met with the Whether Lord John felt, as Johnson exsame fate, as indeed have a hundred others. pressed himself to have done after his defeat, "like the monument," or whether he derived consolation from the reflections of Mr. Wire Wove Hot Press, "that there may be calamitous eclipses of the most effulgent minds," must remain mysteries buried in the womb of time. The plot turns upon the intrigues of the Inquisition, whose chief, Valdez, the grand Inquisitor, works upon the suspicious mind of Philip king of Spain to destroy his son, Don Carlos, suspected of favoring the Protestant cause; and the modus operandi is by insinuating to the King an incestuous intercourse of Don Carlos with the Queen. In the opening scene of Act I., Valdez, the grand Inquisitor, and one of his adherents, Lucero, discuss the King's character and the chances of their success. Valdez tries to remove some scruples of his fellow conspirator. "Valdez. Fear not; The King has got a demon: 'tis suspicion That men are somewhat better than they are, Here, at the very outset, some of the peculiar defects are visible which pervade the whole of the play, and, we might say, the whole of the noble lord's writings. It is evident that the address of Valdez is intended to be dignified, and if tumid metaphor and false aphorism could atone for positive breaches of all rules, both of grammar and composition, it might be; but it is in fact grand nonsense, which, of all things, is the most insupportable. Scene II. discloses the King soliloquizing upon his Queen's dishonor; he requires the attendance of one of her women, Leonora, when the following dignified dialogue takes place. [Enter Donna Leonora.] The King. I ask you how the Queen receives our son? Leonora. I know not well to answer. The King. Yet my words are plain and simple. Leonora. Sire! Indeed The King. Reply; I must have truth. Her cheeks blush deep with rosy streams, her eyes Leonora. Yes, sire: such welcome gives As when upon the dark blank world the sun Pours forth his beams; when undistinguished space Grows rich with meaning; hill, and lake, and plain Glitter in new-born light, and hail the day :- The King. It is well; She should rejoice to see our royal son. My office here is to attend the Queen, Or failed, when reason was, to bear the tale The King. "Tis well, 'tis well : know Not that these things which you have told to me Leonora. Never, gracious sire, have I beheld Aught but of reverence from our royal prince, With due and subject duty Have you observed the Queen at any time Leonora. Sire, Don Carlos gave a necklace to the Queen The King. Madam, it is well: [Aside.] Yet like I not such tokens always worn; We cannot pursue this contemptible trashy dialogue further. The "stilted talk" of the duenna Leonora is only surpassed in non sense by the royal catechist. It is positively beneath all criticism as to versification. It is a mere collocation of words and syllables, marshalled into array by the printer to make a kind of poetry to the eye. It is a species of bad prose in ambush, a jumble of forced metaphor and low phraseology, destructive of both sense and propriety-passing by the morale of the whole, which is flagrant. Can anything be so utterly silly as the exclamation of the King “That I, the king, should know the slightest sign, The breath of air, or creakiug of a door !” Or more unintelligible and nonsensical than "Love leading his march :" and "Warm desires LOOKING on the life:" "Gifts, bonds of courtesy that ADD CIVILITY to kindred ties." The constant recurrence of the same words and the same phrases is enough to nauseate the most indefatigable and indulgent reader. The word "Tale" occurs no less than ten times;* though it will hardly be said "decies repetita placebit." But when we turn to the other characters of the play, we find no better entertainment. ACT II. SCENE I. [Apartment of Don Carlos.] Don Carlos, like his royal father, is given to soliloquizing, and makes his début to the audience in a metaphorical Jeremiad, bewailing his hard lot in having been born a prince instead of a bird-catcher or rustic. His friend Cordoba enters, to inquire by what plan he intends to defeat his unforeseen arrest-a rather curious use of the word defeat, applied to a "fait accompli," the said Don Carlos being safely lodged in durance vile. The prince, very surveyor-like, replies, "I have no plan." Cordoba seems to think such an answer more suited to an architect, and rejoins-“ Such a reply but ill becomes a Prince." Don Carlos is piqued at this, and determines to make for his brevity of response by a grandiloquent confession of his un-princely faculties. up We fear Mother Nature has played off some of her tricks on Lord John. We have sad misgivings, however, that he, like the prince, was more calculated to "wander idly in the woods," "to feed on the wild grape,' and "drink the natural spring," than for court or camp. Poor Cordoba's dull matterof-fact brain finds some difficulty in comprehending these pastoral longings, not exactly, perhaps, appreciating the distinguished propensities of his royal master for drinking natu ral springs and feeding on wild grapes. "Cordoba. Yet still You think of public weal; and even now wise.' |