1826.] On the Decline of the British Drama. 45 



adopted two modes in their attempts to secure success, both on the 

 stage and in the closet. They have made various and strenuous exer- 

 tions at copying the old English drama, which they find admired almost 

 to worship by the critics, and which, also, possessed a good deal of what 

 is at present loved by the multitude ; and they have draughted into 

 their pieces much of that machinery which has been found most suc- 

 cessful in the melodrame. Neither of these expedients, we believe, can 

 ever be successful. Hitherto they have failed, notwithstanding un- 

 doubted genius in some of those Avho have applied them. The imitators 

 of the ancient models, instead of studying their spirit, and applying it 

 (if that be possible) to an altered state of human existence, have en- 

 deavoured to write as the old dramatists actually wrote in their time. 

 They who work upon such a plan must encounter the difficulties which 

 we have before noticed; that they present characters and incidents 

 suited to the feelings, the habits, and the history of an early age, to a 

 people who cannot fully understand them, or judge how far they are 

 consistent with trutli and nature ; and that, drawing from a fancy un- 

 furnished by experience, these writers must often produce things which 

 are not copies of any originals that ever existed. Such j)roduction8 

 share the fate of meaner prodigies ; are admired by the multitude for so 

 much as they possess of what is vehement and surprising; are thus ad- 

 mired, however, only while they are new ; but, by the more discerning, 

 are decried as dramas, and are scarcely saved from neglect and oblivion 

 by the exquisite poetry which they often contain. 



WTiat we have said will sufficiently explain wh^' some of the choicest 

 spirits of the age have not written for the drama. They were, naturally 

 enough, reluctant to try a species of composition in which profit and 

 applause are equally precarious. They turn from the risk of com- 

 promizing that fame of which, in other quarters, they felt themselves 

 the masters, by seeing condemned, in one night, and for ever, the work 

 of many an anxious hour, because, perchance, it wanted qualities, which 

 they could not impart to it without sacrificing a far higher and more 

 valuable renown. That dramatic talent exists among us, and in no 

 ordinary power, has been proved both by those who have, and by those 

 who have not written for the stage. That great genius, to whom we 

 before alluded, who reigns in our literature with a supremacy in which 

 he has never had a rival (no, not even before Byron was lost to 

 us), has given, in his numerous works, examples of almost every kind, 

 and of the highest degrees of dramatic excellence. Whether he deals 

 in " reason or fancy, the gay or the grave," in polished wit, in bursts of 

 humour, in deep and intense feeling, or in stormy and terrific emotion, 

 his characters are seldom other than such as nature herself would draw, 

 and, perhaps, has often drawn them. His failures in this part of the 

 poet's work, the chief test of great, creative, and original powers, are in 

 classes of persons which he appears to have introduced from utter care- 

 lessness, and in order to fill up some blanks in a long story, but which he 

 could have no temptation to introduce into a play. His plots, whatever 

 may be their faults in other respects, are essentially dramatic. The 

 stories are full of action, even when the materials are the simplest ; and 

 the qualities of his persons are elicited by circumstances which may 

 occasionally evince the carelessness of a bold, rapid, and confident 

 genius, but are, for the far greater part, natural, unexpected, and won- 

 derfully suited to illustrate the qualities they are designed to unfold. 



