162 ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 



" trembling of that hill ? Upon that hill behold him ! Seeft 

 " thou, my fon, the angel of terror ?" " 'Tis night around 

 " me, (replies Seth) but I hear the noife of founding fleps !" 

 The fublimity of this terror, which is conveyed to the ear 

 while inviiible to fight, has been felt in the fame manner, and 

 is exprefTed in nearly the fame words, by a poet of our own 

 country, who, in that pafTage at leaft, has touched the lyre 

 with the true energy of a bard. " Hark, (exclaims the Druid 

 in Caraclacus) 



" Hark ! heard you not yon footftep dread . 

 " That fhook the earth with thundring tread, 

 " 'Twas Death !"— 



It will be no difparagement to either of the modern poets, if they 

 fhall be thought to have borrowed the idea from the Oedipus 

 Coloneus of Sophocles. 



The angel is vifible to Adam, and announces his approaching 

 diffolution with the fimplicity and folemnity of his function. 

 The figns he gives are the fun defcending behind the grove 

 of cedars, and the return of the angel, whofe fteps fhall again 

 fhake the earth ; " Thine eye mall be dim, and thou fhalt not 

 " fee me — but thou fhalt hear the rock burfl with the noife of 

 " thunder— thou fhalt hear, and die !" The reader is thus pre- 

 pared for the awful event, and the imagination watches, from 

 fcene to fcene, the finking of the fun and the making of the 

 earth, with that anxious expectation, thofe minute-tevvoxs (if 

 the expreflion may be allowed me), which, of all circumftances, 

 give the ftrongeft emotion to the mind. I take this fhort no- 

 tice of the detail of the particular drama in queftion, though 

 not quite in its proper place here, becaufe it ftands without the 

 pale of theatrical criticifm, and becaufe it is the production of 

 a writer who is but little known in this country, though his ge- 

 nius is revered, even to idolatry, in his own. 



I 



