tance; and thirdly, because it is founded in exaggeration and falsehood; for how is he warranted to say that the story is the public talk and sport of the city? If it were so what can his interference avail? why seek this interview?

Why come to tell her how she might be happy?
To sooth the secret anguish of her soul?
To comfort that fair mourner, that forlorn one,
And teach her steps to know the paths of peace?

No judge of nature will think he takes the means to lead her into the paths of peace by hurrying her to the very brink of desperation. I need not enlarge upon this observation, and shall therefore only remark, that the scene breaks up, as might be expected, with the following proof of her penitence, and his success in persuasion

Henceforth, thou officious fool,

Meddle no more, nor dare e'en on thy life,

To breathe an accent that may touch my virtue:
I am myself the guardian of my honour,
And will not bear so insolent a monitor.

Let us now inquire how Romont (the Horatio of Massinger) conducts this incident, a character from whom less discretion is to be expected than from his philosophical successor. Romont himself discovers Beaumelle and Novall engaged in the most wanton familiarities, and with a warmth suitable to his zeal, breaks up the amorous conference by driving Novall off the scene with ineffable contempt; he then applies himself to the lady, and with a very natural and manly spirit says,

I respect you

Not for yourself, but in remembrance of

Who is your father, and whose wife you now are.

She replies to him with contempt and ridicule; he resumes the same characteristic strain he set out with, and proceeds

-My intents,

Madam, deserve not this: nor do I stay

To be the whetstone of your wit: preserve it
To spend on such as know how to admire

To overthrow your honour. In my sight
With yonder painted fool I frighted from you,
You used familiarity beyond

A modest entertainment: you embraced him
With too much ardour for a stranger, and
Met him with kisses neither chaste nor comely:
But learn you to forget him, as I will
Your bounties to him; you will find it safer
Rather to be uncourtly than immodest,

What avails it to attempt drawing a comparison
between this conduct and that of Horatio's
where no comparison is to be made? I leave it to
the reader, and decline a task at once so unneces
sary and ungrateful.

When Romont finds no impression is to be made upon Beaumelle, he meets her father, and immediately falls into the same reflection that Horatio had struck upon―

Her father!-Hah!

How if I break this to him? Sure it cannot
Meet with an ill construction. His wisdom,
Made powerful by the authority of a father,
Will warrant and give privilege to his counsels.
It shall be so.

If this step needs excuse, the reader will consider that it is a step of prevention. The experiment, however, fails, and he is rebuffed with some asperity by Rochfort; this draws on a scene between him and Charalois, which, as it is too long to transcribe, so it is throughout too excellent to extract any part from it. I can only express my surprise that the author of the Fair Penitent, with this scene before him, could conduct his interview between Altamont and Horatio upon a plan so widely different and so much inferior: I must suppose he thought it a strong incident to make Altamont give a blow to his friend, else he might have seen an interview carried on with infinitely more spirit both of language and character, between Charalois and Romont, in circumstances exactly similar, where no such violence was committed or even meditated. Was it because Pierre had given a blow to Jaffier, that Altamont was to repeat the like indignity to Horatio, for a woman, of whose

Such colour'd stuff. In me there is now speaks to you aversion he had proofs not to be mistaken?

As true a friend and servant to your honour,
And one that will with as much hazard guard it,
As ever man did goodness. But then, lady,
You must endeavour, not alone to be,
But to appear worthy such love and service.

We have just now heard Horatio reproach Calista with the reports that were circulated against her reputation; let us compare it with what Romont says upon the same subject

-But yet be careful,

Detraction's a bold monster, and fears not
To wound the fame of princes, if it find
But any blemish in their lives to work on.
But I'll be plainer with you: had the people
Been learnt to speak but what even now I saw,
Their malice out of that would raise an engine

Charalois is a character at least as high and irritable as Altamont, and Romont is out of all comparison more rough and plain spoken than Horatio; Charalois might be deceived into an opinion of Beaumelle's affection for him, Altamont could not deceive himself into such a notion, and the lady had testified her dislike of him in the strongest terms, accompanied with symptoms which he himself had described as indicating some rooted and concealed affliction: could any solution be more natural than what Horatio gives? Novall was a rival so contemptible that Charalois could not, with any degree of probability, consider him as an object of his jealousy; it would have been a degradation of his character, had he yielded to such a suspicion: Lothario on

the contrary, was of all men living the most to be apprehended by a husband, let his confidence or vanity be ever so great. Rowe, in his attempt to surprise, has sacrificed nature and the truth of character for stage effect; Massinger, by preserving both nature and character, has conducted his friends through an angry altercation with infinitely more spirit, more pathos, and more dramatic effect, and yet dismissed them with the following animated and affecting speech from Charalois to his friend:

Thou'rt not my friend;

Or being so thou'rt mad. I must not buy
Thy friendship at this rate. Had I just cause,
Thou know'st I durst pursue such injury
Through fire, air, water, earth; nay, were they all
Shuffled again to chaos: but there's none.
Thy skill, Romont, consists in camps, not courts.
Farewell uncivil man! let's meet no more:
Here our long web of friendship I untwist.
Shall I go whine, walk pale, and lock my wife
For nothing from her birth's free liberty,
That open'd mine to me? Yes; if I do,
The name of cuckold then dog me with scorn;
I am a Frenchman, no Italian born.

[Exit.

her of the ingratitude with which he has been treated, and says→→→

He who was all to me, child, brother, friend,
With barbarous bloody malice sought my life.

These are very extraordinary terms for a man like Horatio to use, and seem to convey a charge very unfit for him to make, and of a very different nature from the hasty insult he had received; in fact it appears as if the blow had totally reversed his character, for the resolution he takes, in consequence of this personal affront, is just such a one as would be only taken by the man who dared not to resent it

From Genoa, from falsehood and inconstancy,
To some more honest distant clime we'll go ;
Nor will I be beholden to my country

For aught but thee, the partner of my flight.

That Horatio's heroism did not consist in the ready forgiveness of injuries is evident from the obstinate sullenness with which he rejects the penitent apologies of Altamont in the farther progress of the play; I am at a loss therefore to know what colour the poet meant to give his character, by disposing him to quit his country with this insult unatoned for, and the additional stigma upon him of running away from his appointment with Lothario for the next morning amongst the rocks. Had he meant to bring him off upon the repugnance he felt of resenting any re-injury against the son of a father, whose image

It is plain that Altamont at least was an exception to this remark upon Italian husbands. I shall pursue this comparison no farther, nor offer any other remark upon the incident of the blow given by Altamont, except with regard to Horatio's conduct upon receiving it; he draws his sword, and immediately suspends sentment upon the following motive:

Yet hold! By heaven! his father's in his face!

was so visible in his face, that his "heart ran o'er with fondness in spite of his wrongs, and he could rather die than hurt him;" surely that

Spite of my wrongs, my heart runs o'er with tender- image would have interceded no less powerfully

ness,

And I could rather die myself than hurt him.

We must suppose it was the martial attitude
that Altamont had put himself into, which
brought the resemblance of his father so strongly
to the observation of Horatio, otherwise it was
a very unnatural moment to recollect it in,
when he had just received the deepest insult one
man can give to another; it is however worth a
remark, that this father of Altamont should act
on both sides, and yet miscarry in his media-
tion; for it is but a few passages before that Al-
tamont says to Horatio,

Thou wert my father's friend; he loved thee well;
A venerable mark of him

Hangs round thee, and protects thee from my ven-
geance,

I cannot, dare not, lift my sword against thee.

What this mark was is left to conjecture; but it is plain it was as seasonable for Horatio's rescue at this moment, as it was for Altamont a few moments after, who had certainly overlooked it when he struck the very friend against whom he could not, dared not, lift his sword.

When Lavinia's entrance has parted Altamont and Horatio, her husband complains to

for him, when, penetrated with remorse, he intercedes for pity and forgiveness, and even faints at his feet with agony at his unrelenting obduracy: it would be unfair to suppose he was more like his father when he had dealt him an insulting blow, than when he was atoning for an injury by the most ample satisfaction and submission.

This is the light in which the conduct of Horatio strikes me; if I am wrong, I owe an atonement to the manes of an elegant poet, which, upon conviction of my error, I will study to pay in the fullest manner I am able.

It now remains only to say a few words upon the catastrophe, in which the author varies from his original, by making Calista destroy herself with a dagger, put into her hand for that purpose by her father: if I am to moralize upon this proceeding of Sciolto, I know full well the incident cannot bear up against it: a Roman father would stand the discussion better than a Christian one; and I also know that the most natural expedient is unluckily a most undramatic one; yet the poet did not totally overlook it, for he makes Sciolto's first thought turn upon a convent, if I rightly understand the following passage

But I pronounced it

As a judge only, and a friend to justice,

And, zealous in defence of your wrong'd honour,
Broke all the ties of nature, and cast off
The love and soft affection of a father:
I in your cause put on a scarlet robe
Of red-dyed cruelty; but in return

You have advanced for me no flag of mercy;
I look'd on you as a wrong'd husband, but
You closed your eyes against me as a father.
Oh, Beaumelle! Oh, my daughter!-
Charalois. This is madness.

Mellafont, the nephew and heir of Lord Touchwood, being engaged to Cynthia, daughter of Sir Paul Pliant, the traversing this match forms the object of the plot on which this comedy of The Double Dealer is constructed; the intrigue consists in the various artifices employed by Lady Touchwood and her agents for that purpose.

That the object is (as the author himself states it to be) singly this, will appear upon

Rochfort. Keep from me?-Could not one good considering that although the ruin of Mellafont's

thought rise up

To tell you that she was my age's comfort,
Begot by a weak man, and born a woman,
And could not therefore but partake of frailty?
Or wherefore did not thankfulness step forth
To urge my many merits, which I may
Object to you, since you prove ungrateful?
Flinty hearted Charalois !

Charalois. Nature does prevail above your virtue. What conclusions can I draw from these comparative examples, which every reader would not anticipate? Is there a man who has any feeling for real nature, dramatic character, moral sentiment, tragic pathos, or nervous diction, who can hesitate, even for a moment where to bestow the palm?

་་

NUMBER LXXX.

1 was some nights ago much entertained with an excellent represention of Mr. Congreve's comedy of the Double Dealer. When I reflected upon the youth of the author and the merit of the play, I acknowledged the truth of what the late Dr. Samuel Johnson says in his life of this poet, that" amongst all the efforts of early genius which literary history records, I doubt whether any one can be produced that more surpasses the common limits of nature than the plays of Congreve.'

The author of this comedy in his dedication informs us, that he "designed the moral first, and to that moral invented the fable; and does not know that he has borrowed one hint of it anywhere. -"I made the plot," says he, "as strong as I could, because it was single; and I made it single because I would avoid confusion, and was resolved to preserve the three unities of the drama." As it is impossible not to give full

fortune is for a time effected by these contrivances, that are employed for traversing his marriage, yet it is rather a measure of necessity and self-defence in Lady Touchwood than of original design; it springs from the artifice of incident, and belongs more properly to the intrigue than to the object of the plot.

The making or obstructing marriages is the common hinge on which most comic fables are contrived to turn; but in this match of Mellafont's which the author has taken for the groundwork of his plot, I must observe, that it would have been better to have given more interest to an event which he has made the main object of the play: he has taken little pains to recommend the parties to his spectators, or to paint their mutual attachment with any warmth of colouring. Who will feel any concern whether Mellafont marries Cynthia or not, if they themselves appear indifferent on the occasion, and upon the eve of their nuptials converse in the following strain?

Mel. You seem thoughtful, Cynthia.

Cyn. I am thinking, though marriage makes man and wife one flesh it leaves them still two fools, and they be come more conspicuous by setting off one another.

are opposed.
Mel. That's only when two fools meet and their follies

Cyn. Nay, I have known two wits meet, and by the opposition of their wit render themselves as ridiculous as fools. 'Tis an old game we are going to play at; what think you of drawing stakes and giving over in time?

Mel. No, hang it, that's not endeavouring to win, because it is possible we may lose-&c. &c.

This scene, which proceeds throughout in the same strain, seems to confirm Dr. Johnson's remark that, "Congreve formed a peculiar idea of comic excellence, which he supposed to consist in gay remarks and unexpected answers---that his scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery or passion: his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to

A a

ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; and his wit is a meteor piaying to and fro with alternate coruscations." There is but one more interview between In the second act this design upon Lady Cynthia and Mellafont, which is the opening Pliant is played off, and Maskwell in an interof the fourth act, and this is of so flat and insi- | view with Mellafont avows the plot, and sayspid a sort as to be with reason omitted in" to tell you the truth, I encouraged it for your representation; I think therefore it may be diversion." He proceeds to say, that in order justly observed that this match, for the prevention of which artifices of so virulent and diabolical a nature are practised by Lady Touchwood and the Double Dealer, is not pressed upon the feelings of the spectators in so interesting a manner as it should and might have been.