42 On t/ir Decline of the British Drama. [Jan. 



language and sentiment are then only natural, when tliey are suited to 

 the characters of human agents, as these are modified by society. In 

 short, we cannot imagine as spontaneous, in the minds of persons of 

 remote ages, what we never find » within ourselves, or among 

 those with whom we have been conversant. Hence, we believe chiefly, 

 it is that so many of the o]d English dramas are now excluded from the 

 stage. Hence, also, there cannot be a doubt, that if some of those 

 dramas which are now most popular, not excepting some even of Shak- 

 speare himself, consecrated though they are by the public worship, were 

 for the first time presented to a modern audience, they would fail, not- 

 withstanding all those beauties which are of no age or form of society. 

 And we believe that they would be censured most severely for 

 faults of imputed extravagance, where they are truest to human nature 

 — to human nature as it appeared to the poet, and in the form which it 

 assumed in his time. 



Tliese, then, are some of the inevitable causes which increase 

 the difficulties of the tragic poet as society advances ; he finds 

 less of intense emotion — less of bold and peculiar character — less 

 of interesting and striking incident in what he knows of mankind. 

 In a word, he finds human nature less poetical as the world grows 

 older. If he recur to former times for his dramatis persona;, he 

 is likely to misconceive their character ; or, if he represent them faith- 

 fiilly, he is almost sure to offend a public to whom the habits of these 

 times are nearly unknown. His plots, to be interesting, must be his 

 own, or drawn from that scanty store which is not yet quite familiar to 

 the public ; and every thought and expression is the production of 

 one who trembles under the lash of a merciless criticism. 



Some of these causes operate in England with peculiar force at the 

 present time ; but there are others which belong exclusively to the 

 age and the countrj-. 



They whose part it is to trace the progress of literature, have often 

 had occasion to observe upon the revolution in the public taste which 

 has taken place within the last thirty or forty years, and which has not 

 been confined to England, although here its effects have been more 

 strongly marked than in other nations. Our literature, after having 

 been for more than a century laced into a formal and stately shape, 

 and taught to move with steps regulated by the strictest discipline, 

 suffered a sudden and violent reaction. Bursting from restraint, and 

 with a vigour unimpaired by this confinement, it indulged in sallies, 

 various, and sometimes irregular, but usually giving marks of a spirit 

 bold, original, and often sublime. Tired of the solemn — the didac- 

 tic — and the uniform — the public mind, even so early in the last 

 century as when Gray became popular in spite of criticism, imbibed 

 a craving appetite for strong emotion ; and poetry, which is as often 

 the creature as the guide of the public taste, soon took a corresponding 

 direction. Tlie political tempest which has since raged through Europe, 

 though it did not create, served materially to enhance and confirm this 

 peculiarity in the age ; and gave a likeness to many of those qualities, 

 both in characters and in events, which are found in the first periods of 

 civilization. But it was a faint resemblance : manners may degenerate, 

 but they cannot retrace their steps. The ferocities, the dangers, the 

 miseries, and the wonders which we have seen, produced, indeed, great 

 excitement in the minds of men ; but they occurred at a time when 



