44 On the Decline of the British Drama. [Jan. 



critics — a small and subtle band against a mightj' host, who purchase, 

 and read, and, for a season, admire, in spite of all the precepts and 

 arguments, and, worse than these, the ridicule of their assailants. The 

 thirst for excitement is too strong for these remedies ; and though, 

 doubtless, they have done much, if not in effecting a cure, at least in 

 preventing an aggravation, it still remains. To say nothing of our poets, 

 it has been seen in the popularity of translations from the wildest effu- 

 sions of German romance, and of that whole school of writers, in which 

 Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis were distinguished only by possessing more 

 talent and somewhat more zeal than its other disciples — a school which 

 still flourishes, though indeed with diminished strength, in a literature 

 to which belong the names of Edgeworth, and Burney, and Brunton : a 

 school, likewise, some of whose qualities, in deference to the spirit of 

 the times, have been admitted even into those wonderful works, which 

 have been sent forth twice a year with almost unbroken regularity, like 

 spells from a wizard's retreat, to astonish, to agitate, to enchant us, in 

 spite of all our rules and canons of criticism. But it is in the drama that 

 this appetite has exhibited its strongest symptoms, for it is there that 

 literature reflects, with most exactness, the prevailing taste of a people. 

 It was with us, too, that part of literature which suffered most severely 

 during the period when all the works of the imagination were wrought 

 in fetters. Dialogue became debate, or, what was worse, a series of 

 alternate lectures. The persons of the drama, instead of expressing 

 their own feelings, declaimed the sentiments, the opinions, and the 

 descriptions of the poet. IV.ssion was expelled from the stage, or it 

 became the subject of ornamented rhetoric, not of dramatic poetry. 

 The present generation, liowever, seem resolved to atone for the tame- 

 ness of those who went before them : we now find every thing on the 

 stage pushed to extremes. Our most popular performers are, in tragedy, 

 those who venture upon the most vehement and least usual methods of 

 delivery — who, as the phrase is, make most points in their acting ; and, 

 in comedy, those who heighten humour into buffoonery, and even sea- 

 son wit with grimace. Melodrames, a species of entertainment, at 

 which the audience are regaled with all that is wildest and least pro- 

 bable in fiction, and all that is most monsti'ous in character, garnished 

 with due quantities of flame, smoke, and noise, have grown up on the 

 ruins of the regular drama, have been of late years multiplied beyond 

 all former example, and are yearly increasing in number and extrava- 

 gance. Nor are they confined to what are termed the minor play- 

 houses of the metropolis, in which, by a most absurd and preposterous 

 restraint, the regular drama is prohibited. The managers of the great 

 national theatres, naturally enough, however it may be lamented, have 

 given way to the public taste, and granted admission to these ill- 

 favoured prodigies, which now, to our shame be it spoken, more than 

 share the empire of the stage with the legitimate progeny of Shakspeare. 

 When such things are rot merely applauded, but demanded by the many, 

 and decried only by the discerning few, the tragic poet has a difficult 

 part to perform — he must please the one, or liis play dies in its birth — 

 — he must secure the approval of the other, or it will live but for a 

 season. It is in the very nature of a drama of wonder and excesses 

 that.its popularity is fleeting, because when curiosity is gratified, and 

 the freshness of novelty is worn off, the wonder vanishes, and there is 

 no quality left which can please on reflection. Writers have, therefore, 



