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[TO 1830. to Ruin,' and the first to introduce the melodrama into England, was born in London on the 10th of December, 1745. Till I was six years old,' says Holcroft, my father kept a shoemaker's shop in Orange Court; and I have a faint recollection that my mother dealt in greens and oysters.' Humble as this condition was, it seems to have been succeeded by greater poverty, and the future dramatist and comedian was employed in the country by his parents to hawk goods as a pedler. He was afterwards engaged as a stable-boy at Newmarket, and was proud of his new livery. A charitable person, who kept a school at Newmarket, taught him to read. He was afterwards a rider on the turf; and when sixteen years of age, he worked for some time with his father as a shoemaker. A passion for books was at this time predominant, and the confinement of the shoemaker's stall not agreeing with him, he attempted to raise a school in the country. He afterwards became a provincial actor, and spent seven years in strolling about England, in every variety of wretchedness, with different companies. In 1780, Holcroft appeared as an author, his first work being a novel, entitled 'Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian.' In the following year his comedy of Duplicity' was acted with great success at Covent Garden. Another comedy, The Deserted Daughter,' experienced a very favourable reception; but The Road to Ruin' is universally acknowledged to be the best of his dramatic works. This comedy,' says Mrs. Inchbald, ranks amongst the most successful of modern plays. There is merit in the writing, but much more in that dramatic science which disposes character, scenes, and dialogue with minute attention to theatric exhibition.' Holcroft wrote a great number of dramatic pieces-more than thirty between the years 1778 and 1806; three other novels (Anna St. Ives,' 'Hugh Trevor,' and Bryan Perdue'); besides A Tour in Germany and France,' and numerous translations from the German, French, and Italian. During the period of the French Revolution, he was a zealous reformer, and on hearing that his name was included in the same bill of indictment with Tooke and Hardy, he surrendered himself in open court, but no proof of guilt was ever adduced against him. His busy and remarkable life was terminated on the 23d of March, 1809.

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THE GERMAN DRAMAS.

A play by Kotzebue was adapted for the English stage by Mrs. Inchbald, and performed under the title of 'Lovers' Vows. The grand moral was, to set forth the miserable consequences which arise from the neglect, and to enforce the watchful care of illegiti mate offspring; and surely, as the pulpit has not had eloquence to eradicate the crime of seduction, the stage may be allowed a humble endeavour to prevent its most fatal effects.' 'Lovers' Vows' beame a popular acting play, for stage effect was carefully studied, and

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scenes and situations skilfully arranged. While filling the theatres, Kotzebue's plays were generally condemned by the critics. They cannot be said to have produced any permanent bad effect on our national morals, but they presented many false and pernicious pictures to the mind. There is an affectation,' as Scott remarks, of attributing noble and virtuous sentiments to the persons least qualified by habit or education to entertain them; and of describing the higher and better educated classes as uniformly deficient in those feelings of liberality, generosity, and honour, which may be considered as proper to their situation in life. This contrast may be true in particular instances, and being used sparingly, might afford a good moral lesson; but in spite of truth and probability, it has been assumed, upon all occasions, by those authors as the groundwork of a sort of intellectual Jacobinism.' Scott himself, it will be recollected, was fascinated by the German drama, and translated a play of Goethe. The excesses of Kotzebue were happily ridiculed by Canning and Ellis in their amusing satire, 'The Rovers.' At length, after a run of unexampled success, these plays ceased to attract attention, though one or two are still occasionally performed. With all their absurdities, we cannot but believe that they exercised an inspiring influence on the rising genius of that age. They dealt with passions, not with manners, and awoke the higher feelings and sensibilities of the people. Good plays were alse mingled with the bad: if Kotzebue was acted, Goethe and Schiller were studied. Coleridge translated Schiller's Wallenstein,' and the influence of the German drama was felt by most of the young poets.

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LEWIS-GODWIN-SOTHEBY-COLERIDGE.

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One of those who imbibed a taste for the marvellous and the romantic from this source was MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS, whose drama, ‘The Castle Spectre,' was produced in 1797, and was performed about sixty successive nights. It is full of supernatural horrors, deadly revenge, and assassination, with touches of poetical feeling, and some well managed scenes. In the same year, Lewis adapted a tragedy from Schiller, entitled The Minister;' and this was followed by a succession of dramatic pieces-' Rolla,' a tragedy, 1799; The East Indian,' a comedy, 1800; Adelmorn, or the Outlaw,' a drama, 180!; Rugantio,' a melodrama, 1805; Adelgitha,' a play, 1806; Venoni,' a drama, 1809; 'One o'clock, or the Knight and Wood Demon,' 1811; Timour the Tartar,' a melodrama, 1812; and Rich and Poor,' a comic opera, 1812. The Castle Spectre is still occasionally performed; but the diffusion of a more sound and healthy taste in literature has banished the other dramas of Lewis equally from the stage and the press. To the present generation they are unknown. They were fit companions for the ogres giants, and Blue-beards of the nursery tales, and they have shared the same oblivion.

MR. GODWIN, the novelist, attempted the tragic drama in the year 1800, but his powerful genius, which had produced a romance of deep and thrilling interest, became cold and frigid when confined to the rules of the stage. His play was named Antonio, or the Soldier's Return.' It turned out a miracle of dullness,' as Sergeant Talfourd relates, and at last the actors were hooted from the stage. The author's equanimity under this severe trial is amusingly related by Talfourd. Mr. Godwin,' he says, 'sat on one of the front benches of the pit, unmoved amidst the storm. When the first act passed off without a hand, he expressed his satisfaction at the good sense of the house; the proper season of applause had not arrived;" all was exactly as it should be. The second act proceeded to its close in the same uninterrupted calm: his friends became uneasy, but still his optimism prevailed; he could afford to wait. And although he did at last admit the great movement was somewhat tardy, and that the audience seemed rather patient than interested, he did not lose his confidence till the tumult arose, and then he submitted with quiet dignity to the fate of genius, too lofty to be understood by a world as yet in its childhood.'

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The next new play was also by a man of distinguished genius, and it also was unsuccessful. Julian and Agnes,' by WILLIAM SOTHEBY, the translator of Oberon,' was acted April 25, 1800. 'In the course of its performance, Mrs. Siddons, as the heroine, had to make her exit from the scene with an infant in her arms. Having to retire precipitately, she inadvertently struck the baby's head violently against a door-post. Happily, the little thing was made of wood, so that her doll's accident only produced a general laugh, in which the actress herself joined heartily.' This 'untoward event' would have marred the success of any new tragedy; but Mr. Sotheby's is deficient in arrangement and dramatic art.

The tragedies of Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Procter, and Milmannoticed in our account of these poets-must be considered as poems rather than plays. Coleridge's Remorse' was acted with some success in 1813, aided by fine original music, but it has not since been revived. It contains, however, some of Coleridge's most exquisite poetry and wild superstition, with a striking romantic plot. We extract one scene:

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[Scene-A Hall of Amoury, with an altar at the back of the stage. Soft music from an instrument of glass or steel.]

VALDEZ, ORDONIO, and ALVAR, in a Sorcerer's robe, are discovered.
ORDONIO. This was too melancholy, father.
VALDEZ. Nay,

My Alvar loved sad music from a child.
Once he was lost, and after weary search
We found him in an open place in the wood,
To which spot he had followed a blind boy,
Who breathed into a pipe of sycamore

Some strangely moving notes; and these, he said,
Were taught him in a dream. Him we first saw
Stretched on the broad top of a sunny heath-bank:
And lower down poor Alvar, fast asleep,

His head upon the blind boy's dog. It pleased me
To mark how he had fastened round the pipe
A silver toy his grandam had late given him.
Methinks I see him now as he then looked-
Even so! He had outgrown his infant dress,
Yet still he wore it.

ALVAR. My tears must not flow!

I must not clasp his knees, and cry, 'My father"

Enter TERESA and Attendants.

TERESA. Lord Valdez, you have asked my presence here, And I submit; but-Heaven bear witness for me

My heart approves it not! 'tis mockery.

ORD. Believe you, then, no preternatural influence?
Believe you not that spirits throng around us?
TER. Say rather that I have imagined it

A possible thing; and it has soothed my soul
As other fancies have; but ne'er seduced me
To traffic with the black and frenzied hope

That the dead hear the voice of witch or wizard.

[To Alvar.] Stranger. I mourn and blush to see you here, On such employment! With far other thoughts

I left you.

ORD. [Aside.] Ha! he has been tampering with her. ALV. O high-souled maiden! and more dear to me Than suits the stranger's name!

I swear to thee

I will uncover all concealed guilt.

Doubt, but decide not! Stand ye from the altar.

[Here a strain of music is heard from behind the scenes.'

With no irreverent voice or uncouth charm

I call up the departed!

Soul of Alvar!

Hear our soft suit, and heed my milder spell:

So may the gates of paradise, unbarred,

Cease thy swift toils! Since happily thou art one

Of that innumerable company

Who in broad circle, lovelier than the rainbow,

Girdle this round earth in a dizzy motion,

With noise too vast and constant to be heard:

Fitliest unheard! For oh, ye numberless
And rapid travellers! what ear unstunned,

What sense unmaddened, might bear up against

The rushing of your congregated wings?

Even now your living wheel turns o'er my head!

[Music,

[Music expressive of the movements and images that follow

Ye, as ye pass, toss high the desert sands,

That roar and whiten like a burst of waters,

A sweet appearance, but a dread illusion

To the parched caravan that roams by night!

And ye, build up on the becalmed waves

That whirling pillar, which from earth to heaven

Stands vast, and moves in blackness! Ye, too, split
The ice mount! and with fragments many and huge
Tempest the new-thawed sea, whose sudden gulfs
Suck in. perchance, some Lapland wizard's skiff!
Then round and round the whirlpool's marge ye dance,

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[Here, behind the scenes a voice sings the three words,' Hear, sweet spirit."]

Soul of Alvar!

Hear the mild spell, and tempt no blacker charm!

By sighs unquiet, and the sickly pang
Of a half-dead yet still undying hope,
Pass visible before our mortal sense!

So shall the church's cleansing rights be thine,

Her knells and masses, that redeem the dead!

(Song behind the scenes, accompanied by the same instrument as before.]

Hear, sweet spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel!

So shall the midnight breezes swell
With thy deep long lingering knell.
And at evening evermore,

In a chapel on the shore,

Shall the chanters, sad and saintly,
Yellow tapers burning faintly,
Doleful masses chant for thee,
Miserere Domine!

Hark! the cadence dies away

On the yellow moonlight sea:

The boatmen rest their oars and say,
Miserere, Domine !

ORD. The innocent obey nor charm nor spell!
My brother is in heaven. Thou sainted spirit,
Burst on our sight, a passing visitant!

Once more to hear thy voice, once more to see thee,
Oh, 'twere a joy to me!

ALV. A joy to thee!

What if thou heardst him now? What if his spirit

Re-entered its cold corse, and came upon thee

[A long pause,

With many a stab from many a murderer's poniard ?
What if-his steadfast eye still beaming pity
And brother's love-he turned his head aside,
Lest he should look at thee, and with one look
Hurl thee beyond all power of penitence?
VALD. These are unholy fancies!

ORD. [Struggling with his feelings.] Yes, my father,
He is in heaven!

ALV. [Still to Ordonio]. But what if he had a brother,
Who had lived even so, that at his dying hour

The name of heaven would have convulsed his face

More than the death-pang?

VALD. Idly prating man!

Thou hast guessed iff: Don Alvar's only brother

Stands here before thee-a father's blessing on him!
He is most virtuous.

ALV. [Still to Ordonio.] What if his very virtues
Had pampered his swollen heart and made him proud?
And what if pride had duped him into guilt?

Yet still he stalked a self-created god,

Not very bold but exquisitely cunning;

And one that at his mother's looking-glass

Would force his feature to a frowning sternness!

Young lord! I tell thee that there are such beings→→→

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