To

STORY'S "NERO."

'O devote one's self to a specialty is almost essential to success, and yet there are men vain enough to think they can be great. in Art, and Literature, and Science, all at once. "Jack of all trades and master of none" is especially true when so many earnest workers crowd not only the avenues but by ways to fame and fortune, even to an honest living. Hawthorne, in his " Italian Notes," speaks of Mr. W. W. Story, the author of this play of "Nero," as a man of a "perplexing variety of talents and accomplishments, he being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a musician and a sculptor." His fame as a sculptor is established, and this, if anything, will give his talents a place after the man is dead; his poetry never will.

The play of "Nero" comprises a period of about thirteen years, beginning a short time after the emperor's accession and ending with his death. One steady stream of horrors, any one of them terrible and tragic enough for the catastrophe of the worst stamp of Bowery Theatre

talent, flows along without a pleasing character or incident to relieve the monotony. Octavia is the only character who is good, and hers is a goodness that is stale and flat. She is good because she has not the energy or ambition to be wicked. Mr. Story has written a paraphrase of Tacitus, leaving out the wars and some few hundred of the murders which graced the reign of the "last and worst of the Cæsars." There is little added except the "multitudinous figures,"-to quote the Nation-among which Mr. Story "moves easily and gracefully," and the narrative is changed to dialogue. The play is utterly without any descriptive passages worthy of the name.

In the dedication to Mrs. Kemble, the author says: "I should have less question of the success of this play, if it could be read or acted by you." Doubtless his ambition pictured crowded houses, intent on the plot, and waiting anxiously for every word; and he was willing to sacrifice a little of poetic beauty to vivacity of discourse and effect. Whatever his reason may have been, the play sadly needs some relief to the dark scenes enacted one after another. The murder columns of the Herald put in verse would not present a less attractive story. It is the fault of the author that such a character as Nero is chosen, for, as he says, to his mind it presents a succession of dramatic events well worthy of a place among our tragedies. If, as may be inferred from what Mr. Story says, the play be intended for representation, no scenes could have been selected so utterly destitute of dramatic interest when taken together, though any one of them, properly treated, enlarged and placed among dependent circumstances, as such a dramatist as Swinburne knows how to do so well, would furnish plot enough for any tragedy. As it is, the play has no plot; there is no one point on which a hearer's attention can be fixed; no character in whom he feels an interest. The perusal of the book is fully as tedious, and far less instructive than the histories of which it is an abridgement.

The chief merit of the book is in the way the characters are treated. Every one is true to history and the

little that is supplied is in strict accordance with the truth. The characters, especially Nero, have in the thirteen years abundant opportunity to be developed, and this development is cleverly indicated. Nero, from a boy whose vices were not yet fairly started, is seen in every stage, until he appears the buffoon, butcher and coward that he was. The ambition of Poppæa, her cleverness and womanly knowledge of her power are well and skillfully brought out, and Seneca, if he appears less worthy of our admiration, is shown as wise and shrewd as the imagination pictures. Agrippina is perhaps the best drawn character in the play unless it be the fawning Tigellinus. In every act she appears as a woman continually striving after power, willing to keep it by any means, even as she had gained it by the murder of Claudius. Nothing is too bad or vile, provided it leads to power. She even tries, in a scene which might much better have been omitted, to arouse in Nero a passion for herself. With her as the heroine, and some one of the numerous scenes in which she figures as the substance of the plot, Mr. Story might have produced a thrilling drama. All the lesser characters are as cleverly presented, and the whole book presents a study and knowledge of human nature which will, perhaps, keep it from off the closet shelf.

Mr. Story appears to have regarded Swinburne, not perhaps as a model, but as pursuing the true path of poetry. His diction is forced and tortured into all sorts of ungainly shapes for emphasis and strength, and the succeeding passages are consequently weak and prosy. There is a continual striving after effect, a lavish use of the strongest words for weak ideas, which offers a striking contrast to the passionate parts in Swinburne, where even the strongest words he uses are felt to be almost insufficient for the force of his feeling.

The figures are, for the most part, old and well worn; and, although it is difficult to say who has used them, yet there is a consciousness that you have seen them over and over again. This lack of originality is a very apparent