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spider's web, makes a desperate attempt to flounder out of it. He who is, as he thinks, most firmly seated on a virtue is, generally, when he least thinks of it, cheated in his most praiseworthy attempts, (holding by mane and crupper,) not to be kicked off upon occasion. Well for him if he has patent stirrups. Thus, do we not, every day, see shabby fellows of all descriptions, attempting, by some convulsive effort of ostentatious expense, to redeem themselves from the conscious stigma? Devoted lovers, every warm July, going near to turn out jured men" and "treacherous wretches?" Duellists, getting nervous, after supping upon lobsters, and coming off" second best," with an "explanation," on a frosty morning? Respectable matrons of forty-three, who have had four children, running away with whey-faced ensigns of nineteen, turned up with green? Old bachelors of seventy-eight marrying girls in their teens; and, equipped in Wellington pantaloons and stays, giving their congratulators wine at two in the morning? "Saints" getting into trouble with their housekeepers, or indecorously tipsy at vestry meetings; and high-bred young ladies, who play upon the harp and talk Italian, sneaking off to country churches with small tradesmen, who cannot talk at all except behind the counter, or play upon anything but their customers? Now these, God wot, are all inconsistencies, but all strictly natural; inasmuch as they chance, upon an average, to happen, about every other day through

the week.

It is this opposite play of the passions-this crossing of the currents of mind-which constitutes the charm of Shakspeare's characters, and of the successful characters of other dramatists. Hamlet is, probably, the finest dramatic character that ever was drawn. But he is so, not because he is highly consistent, but because he is amazingly inconsistent. We dispute and argue, pro and con, about him, as we do about living friends, whose actions do not happen exactly to accord with our notions of the fitness of things. Now, if he was one of the French" consistencies"-if he was set in motion, leg and arm, like a child's Jack-o'-longlegs, by pulling a string, there would be no occasion for this. Some large-eared critic will interpose here, and, with

a knowing smirk and wink of an eye, because he thinks he has caught one

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—remark, “if inconsistency be what you want, it is easier to draw an inconsistent than a consistent character: it is only to jumble up all sorts of he terogeneous passions and actionsGently, gently, good friend. We were just going to observe that this doctrine of inconsistency is the dramatic pons asinorum," over which, as you are sure to plump, you had better stay where you are for a little,-we were upon the point of saying, that inconsistency merely, good critic, in the naked sense of the word, will not do. It must be a natural and consistent inconsistency; that is to say-(Now, mark, long ears)-the actions inconsistent with each other, must be such as we have seen to occur in nature in the order in which they stand; and which may be accounted for by reference to some known and customary temperament. And this is the case with Hamlet. His aberrations are precisely those which we are accustomed to observe in nervous, morbidly sensitive, and melancholy characters. His hatred of his uncle and disgust for his mother; his extreme curiosity respecting the supernatural appearance of his father; his determined purposes of revenge; his speedy falterings and doubts; his loathing of the world and distrust of all around him; his love for Ophelia ; his suspicions and consequent harsh treatment; his easy assumption of insanity, as being constitutionally inclined to that disease; his moody triflings with Polonius, the Players, Osrick, and the Grave-diggers; his wildness at Ophelia's funeral; and, lastly, his resolute and cool activity when mortally wounded, make up a compound of character, natural in the highest degree, but depending upon intricacies of temperament, passion, and situation, such as Shakspeare only could have conceived, and ot which the world will probably never see the equal in ideal representation.. Other plays may be more poetical; others more terrible; others more pathetic; but, for the exhibition of human nature, this unrivalled effort must continue to be the admiration of learned and unlearned as long as the English language shall exist. The play is almost a monologue. The other characters are barely foils to Hamlet. He appears in nearly every scene, and yet

at every appearance it is under some new phase, some change, some turn of the varying currents which ruffle the surface of his mind, some momentary shadowing of feeling or circumstance which we have not seen before. Upon the same principle is to be calculated the value of the characters of Lear, Falstaff, Richard the Second, Macbeth, Rosalind, Beatrice, Jacques, and (to leave our great dramatist) of Leon, Caratach, Friscobaldo, Lady Brute, Lord Ogleby, Mrs Cole, Sir Luke Limp, Sir Peter Teazle, Charles Surface, Tyke, and a host of others, which to mention were endless. All these are "inconsistent," some of them enough to puzzle a college. But then they are naturally so; and that is the key of the matter. So much for character.

Ever since about the year seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, there has been a dreadful outcry against "French principles," and perhaps they may be bad enough; but " French criticism" has done us ten times the harm. To be sure, it has had more time, having infested us for these hundred and sixty years and in that hundred and sixty it has played the mischief with the play-houses. It has gone near to transform our tragedies into pompous dull poems, and our comedies into acted charades, or witty essays, in question and answer. In these doings, it has proceeded upon the wise or rather sage principle, vulgarly called "buttering a goose;" prosifying where there was prose enough before, and poetising what was poetical enough already. In tragedy, the mischief was wrapped up in a single word, " dignity;" in comedy, by another," wit;" small pills, considering of what a strong dose of nonsense they were the vehicle.

If we define the Drama, it must be a sort of poetry, which represents the serious or the lighter passages of human life, by exhibiting the conversations and actions of supposed agents. To be Poetry, it must of course be poetical, more or less; and to be Dramatic, that is to say, like life, it must, equally, of course, be familiar more or less; for human actions and sayings are, more or less, familiar things. This seems so palpable and self-evident, that one wonders how it could ever be missed, and what is still more extraordinary, the practical part or way

to bring the desired effect about seems equally plain. If a thing is to be at once poetical and familiar, there is only one way for it, and that is to mix poetry and familiarity together in some proportion or other. There is no other conceivable way. This was the mode of the old English Dramatists one and all-the very "heart of their mystery," too sound a one to be "plucked out" by a gabbling" Mounseer" of a French critic. In Shakspeare and his fellows we find the most glorious and exalted poetry brought down to the familiar level and semblance of common life and nature, by a judicious and artful intermixture of the strongest, boldest, plainest, most straight-forward expressions and allusions. But this was not refined enough, forsooth, for the "polite nation!" not it! To put water in his brandy, until it was reduced to proof, was too homely an expedient for a triple-japanned Frenchman, who" could not say apple dumpling" if you would hang him. The allusions were too coarse, too low; and the expressions too rude. Your French critic, like the owner of the dancing bear in Goldsmith's play," hates anything low." "Meal and bran together" is not for them. So we are to be crammed with indigestible superfine French-Roll, as insipid as chalk, and twice as noxious, in lieu of our wholesome old English Messeline. "Oh! their bons! their bons!"

Somebody, the other day (was it the Opium-eater?) told a story of his reading the play of Macbeth (he should have read him first his own admirable critique on "the knocking at the Door") to an intelligent Frenchman. When they came to the line, "I heard the owl scream and the cricket cry,"

up starts monsieur, with a loud "bah!'' declaring that no audience in France could be brought to endure an allusion so mean and ridiculous. He would have said the same thing a scene or two afterwards,

"The night hath been unruly. Where we lay

Our chimneys were blown down—” A French tragedy hero does not condescend to know anything of chimneys. This is just of a piece with all their criticism; and what havoc would it not make with the most effective passages of our best tragedies? Look

"Sages their solemn een may steek, And raise a philosophic reek,

And physically causes seek

In clime and season; But tell me whisky's name in GreekI'll tell the reason!"

Monopoly" happens to be Greek ready-made, and that is all the differ

ence.

It is an amusing thing to read the heavy dolours and laments that are every day poured forth over the decay of British dramatic taste, especially as contrasted with its flourishing state amongst our refined neigh bours in France. "Go and see (sob they) Talma play in a tragedy of Corneille or Voltaire, and shall you hear a pin drop, so hushed is the audience. Nay, so saturated is the pit with the dramatic spirit, that the smallest deviation from the true text of the author is sure to draw down a correcting hiss of disapprobation. Whilst in Drury Lane or Covent Garden-But we can no more."

Lackadaisy! now let us pick up our senses a little, and try to look this astounding difference plainly in the face. Don't let us be spouted, and mouthed, and whimpered out of our understand ings. Let us inquire into the facts; for upon an appeal to sheer common matter-of-fact must the decision of this apparent paradox hinge at last. Let us request this Jeremiah of a Cockney to drop his lamentations for a little, and condescend to answer a couple of brief and simple questions. "Pray, now, tell us how many theatres for the enactment of regular tragedy, comedy, and farce, have you 'in Lunnun,' as you call it?" "Two."-" How many are there in Paris, do you reckon ?""Can't say precisely, 'pon honour; may be two-and-thirty." Very well, good gentleman of the press: now, in the difference between two and two-and-thirty lies this mystery; and, in the difference between thirty two and two, its developement.

If we make a sort of rough calculation of the different grades of a population, enlightened, half enlightened, and unenlightened, we shall, of course, find the whole to comprehend a huge diversity of folks, of different hues and shades of intellect; and amongst these must be, of course, as many various and opposite reasons for going to a playhouse, as for going to a church or conventicle. Here, a grave-looking man goes, because he likes "

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laugh at a good comedy;" and there, a well-fed-looking merry little grig has a strong propensity to shed Hogarthian tears over a "tradesman's tragedy." This bushy-eyed blackletter can away with nothing but old plays; that dirty-cravatted little cockney can relish nothing but new ones. Old Rosy-gills "likes nothing (puffing and blowing) equal to a good farce." Miss Melesindar, his daughter, ("Fie! pa'! what a taste!") doats upon the Stranger and Lovers' Vows. Master Caleb insists upon Perouse, or Mother Goose; whilst their uncle by the mother's side, Peter Squeak, affects a musical entertainment, the Haunted Tower, or the Cabinet. Tim Stay-tape goes every other night to see" the 'orses;" whilst John Lump divides his affections between "the quadrupeds" and "Grimaldi." Old Lady this is rapturous upon " young Roscii," and patronizes "Miss Mudie." Lady the other betrays a preference for Signor Richer, the tightrope dancer. The "dandies" d-n the play altogether, and go to look at the girls: the girls go to be looked at by the dandies. The "light-finger'd gentry" go to look after other people's pockets; the sellers of ices, jellies, liqueurs, and play-bills, to look after their own. The loungers look at the ices and jellies, or at nothing at all. Now, without taking the trouble to count fingers, here are enumerated, perhaps, some dozen and a half of different motives for going into a playhouse. Suppose then, at any thea tre, on any given night or nights, (as Mr Coleridge would say) the performance be predicated to be of any given species, say a tragedy or a comedy, it follows, there being only two theatres, that, upon a calcula tion of chances, only one-ninth of the audience will be interested by the performance per se, besides the collateral consideration that, of that ninth perhaps a third are, from the size of the house, too far off to hear what is going forward. "They manage (certain it is) these matters better in France." Contrast this hotch-potch with the state of matters at Paris. Likely enough there may be at the "Théâtre Français," a genteel audience, the parterre a hotbed of critics, with cambric-handkerchiefs, applauding Talma and Voltaire in the same breath, with all the energy of

Puff himself. But be it recollected, that at one and the same moment of time, there is a second set of merry grigs enjoying the broad-farce and bur lesque of the "Port St Martin ;" a third pastoralising over the little musical pieces of the " Vaudeville;" a fourth, amusing themselves at the "Varietés;" a fifth; listening to plea sant airs at the "Opera Comique;" and a sixth, weeping over pathetic ones at the "Academie Royale de Musique," or the "Théâtre Italien;" besides hundreds more gabbling and grimacing at the " Salle Favart," the "Odeon," or some place or other of dramatic or semi-dramatic entertain ment, in every street and Fauxbourg of Paris, as each shall happen to be honoured, on each night, with the patronage of Madame and Monsieur. Now here is a very different state of affairs. Every one has a theatre according to his taste, and thither accordingly he hies, and is tolerably quiet and rational when he gets there. But cram these heterogeneous mate rials, per force, into a great overgrown "patent" playhouse, where nine tenths of them either do not hear, or do not care about the matter in hand, and what wonder that the whole should become a rank and seething mass of noise, heat, and dissipation, vice, and folly; and that those for whose especial benefit the place was intended, should especially-keep away?

That any one should suppose the English nation indifferent to its better dramas, seems very ridiculous. Yet such things have been asserted, and the most precious proof was to be the practice of those bloated hotbeds of all that is weak, worthless, and exotic-the London Theatres! What

a conclusion to draw from such premises! Good God! The French more regardful than the English of their dramatic authors!-when the editions of Shakspeare alone, taking number, costliness, and elaboration into the account, would perhaps equal, if not exceed, all the editions of all their dramatic poets that the French ever produced. Do we not see edition after edition of our older dramatic poets undertaken, published, and sold? Do we not see their lines quoted, their style imitated, and their example followed, by the best writers of the age? And, after all this, we are to be told that dramatic taste is extinct in England? No, no. Dramatic taste is upon the revival in England. There is more and better Dramatic taste now in England than there was a century ago. Let our monopoly-hating ministers only break up the most barefaced and wanton of all monopolies. Let them pack off the pickpockets and prostitutes to the Opera-house, the Argyle-rooms, or the Pavé. The dan dies to Bond-Street or Tattersal's, and the cockneys to Vauxhall: The jockeys to Astley's; and the painters to the Diorama. Let the lovers of noise and nonsense go to the Concert of Ancient Music; and the lovers of nonsense without noise, to the Fantoccini exhibition, or the next Quakers' meetingbut let the lovers of the genuine English Drama have a theatre of their own. Let it be moderately sized, moderately lighted, with moderate hours, fair scenery, good actors, and excellent management, and it shall be seen whether Shakspeare cannot draw as attentive an audience as Punch, the Oratorios, or the Rev. Mr Irving.