readily acknowledge the assistance we have derived from his elegant essay, in this brief sketch of the rise and progress of Roman literature; and shall be very glad to avail ourselves of the opportunity, which we trust he will soon afford us, for tracing the history of its decline and fall.*

ART. IV.-Life (sic) of Mrs. Siddons. By Thomas Campbell. 2 vols. 8vo. London.

1834.

THIS book is a real superfetation. We doubt whether the very

uneventful life of Mrs. Siddons had not been already overwritten; but we are confident that every one, except Mr. Campbell, must agree, that after Mr. Boaden's labours on this subject, there was no room for another voluminous biography. Mr. Boaden, not satisfied with having anticipated the most important circumstances of Mrs. Siddons's history in his Life of Kemble, had favoured us with an equally copious Life of Mrs. Siddons herself; and although he professes to give not merely these lives, but a history of the stage during their time, there surely was not matter for four octavos-nay, we are satisfied that one volume would have afforded ample room for both the brother and the sister—the history of the stage in their day, and as much criticism as could be requisite to the due appreciation of their several merits. After expressing this opinion as to Mr. Boaden's bulky production, it is needless to say that another work, equally voluminous and more expensive, appears to us worse than unnecessary; and we regret to add, that the manner in which it is executed can add nothing to the reputation of either the object or the author of this abuse of biography. Mr. Campbell incidentally hints that Mrs. Siddons left to him her papers,' but he does not state this as an excuse for attempting this work of supererogation-indeed, it would afford none; for a few pages of autobiographical memoranda, a couple of prosy dissertations on the characters of Constance and Lady Macbeth, and three or four very unimportant letters, are the only things that can in substance (if such trifles may, by any laxity of language, be called substantial) distinguish Mr. Campbell's Life from that of his predecessor; while, on the other hand, Mr. Boaden's extensive theatrical information, and his personal recollections of the whole of Mrs. Siddons's career, of which from first to last he was an admiring, yet critical witness, give to his narrative and opinions a vivacity and authority to which Mr. Campbell, who appears to

* We observe that Mr. Dunlop has recently put forth Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II:' such a work was wanted, and we doubt not we shall find that he has ably acquitted himself in it;-but we hope he has not abandoned the completion of his earlier and more universally interesting undertaking. know

know little of the stage in general, and nothing from his own observations of Mrs. Siddons's earliest and most interesting triumphs, cannot pretend.

We however expected, that, in the elegancies of style, in accuracy of literary history, and in delicacy of criticism, Mr. Campbell would have improved upon his predecessor; but we are sorry to say that we have been, on every point, signally disappointed. In fact, we are much inclined to credit a prevailing rumour, that Mr. Campbell ought rather to be considered as the editor than as the substantial author of this book. Mr. Boaden's diction, though occasionally forcible, is too often inflated and obscure he seems a great admirer of Gibbon, and sometimes applies with ludicrous solemnity to his dramatic history the oracular* style in which Gibbon describes the decline of the Roman empire. But Mr. Campbell-or, as we are willing to believe, Mr. Campbell's journeyman-has an obscure bombast of his own, which is still more intolerable—as our readers may judge from the following examples, extracted, with no labour of search, from the earlier pages of the work.

When he recollects Mr. Stephen Kemble on the Edinburgh boards, 'joy comes to his heart.'-p. 20. When he means to express an opinion that the Paradise Lost' was not embellished by Mrs. Siddons's recitation, he says the muse of Milton is too proud to borrow a debt from elocution.'-p. 37. When Mr. Siddons, whose addresses were not at first agreeable to Miss Kemble's parents, proposed to his beloved an immediate elopement, she, tempering amatory with filial duty, declined the proposal.'—p. 48.

What is amatory duty? But if that expression be somewhat turgid, we are immediately refreshed with the familiar slip-slop of declining the proposal!

When the author of the tragedy of The Regent' fell under what Mr. Campbell calls the savage vituperation' (though he does not deny that it was well deserved) of our beloved associate and friend, Mr. Gifford, he adds- But his scathed laurels did not lower him in Mrs. Siddons's regard.'—p. 52.

*To avoid the repetition of proper names, as well as to give epigrammatic point to his periods, Gibbon is fond of describing his characters by some accidental quality, or some incidental allusion; for instance- These spiritual terrors were enforced by a dexterous application to the Byzantine court; the trembling president implored the mercy of the church; and the descendant of Hercules enjoyed the satisfaction of raising a prostrate tyrant?-Dec. and Fall, c. xx. § v. It requires a degree of attention rather to be expected from a mathematical student than a mere reader of history to discover that the president and the tyrant were no other than a certain 'haughty magistrate' before mentioned, whom, on further search, we find to have been one Andronicus, who is further designated as the monster of Libya—and that the descendant of Hercules was a 'philosophical bishop,' who, by reference to a former paragraph, is ascertained to have been the polite and eloquent Synesius,'

When

When he contrasts Mrs. Siddons's early failure with her subsequent triumphs, it is in a magnificence of metaphor that is liker the old galimatias of a French éloge than good English biography.

'Her case adds but one to the many instances in the history of great actors and orators, of timidity obscuring the brightest powers at their outset; like chilling vapours awhile retarding the beauty of a day in spring. But the day of her fame, when it rose, well repaid her for the lateness of its rising, and its splendour more than atoned for its morning shade.'-pp. 76, 77.

When he would tell us that Mrs. Siddons probably excelled all her predecessors, he opines

My inference is, if I may parody Milton's phrase, that she was the fairest of her predecessors-and that if Time could rebuild his ruins, and react the lost scenes of existence, he would present no female to match her on the Tragic stage.'-p. 94.

Our author suggests that the indelicacy of making love on the stage is greater in an amateur than a professional actress, but so commonplace a sentiment might have been expressed more soberly than in the following style :

There are persons, not puritanical, who think it derogatory to female delicacy to meet the gaze of spectators in impassioned parts. . . But the public actress has a fair apology, and her professional publicity is an additional challenge to her virtuous pride.'-p. 102.

When Mr. Campbell has been startled by an incredible statement, it makes the hair of his literary faith stand on end.'-p. 111. He resents with great indignation certain insinuations which some late writers have made against the virtue of Mrs. Bracegirdle, an actress who flourished an hundred and thirty years ago. quarrel is just as important as that about the character of Sir Archy's great grandmother;' but it gives occasion to the following sentiment, which seems so moral and so beautiful, that we wish we could understand it.

The

Injustice towards the dead leads, by no very circuitous route, to injustice towards the living. Once convict the one on false or defective evidence, and you will soon leave the other at the mercy of malignity. The serpent vituperation will thus grow into an amphisbæna, to sting at both ends.'-pp. 123, 124.

But while he thus pompously inculcates the duty of charity towards ladies of the fifteenth century, we regret to say that his practice is not always consistent with his precept; for, after stating that the mother of Mrs. Ellinor Gwynne was drowned by falling from her window into the Thames,' he adds, in a spirit and style very different from the charity and elegance of the amphishana passage which we have just quoted-

VOL. LII. NO. CIII.

H

• What

'What had made her top heavy is not recorded.'-p. 101. We really do not understand why the sobriety of Mrs. Gwynne, senior, should not be just as much an object of the moralist's solicitude as the chastity of Mrs. Bracegirdle-even though this significant name should lead Mr. Campbell to hope that she could not be 'a Paphian Grace with zone unbound.'

When Mr. Campbell wishes to explain that Mrs. Pritchard did not please so much in Dublin as she had done in London, he says, that she electrified the Irish with disappointment.'-p. 141. This we suppose is what the philosophers call negative electricity.

The following is still more scientific: meaning to enforce the recondite truth, that good acting may set off a bad play, he pro

nounces

ice'

⚫ that it is not more certain that the northern lights can play upon -[an axiom which, we confess, we do not clearly understand] than that electrifying acting has often irradiated dramas very frigid to the readers.'-p. 167.

These examples, taken rather than selected from the earlier pages of the work, will probably satisfy our readers as to the taste of its author's style, and will justify us in asking, in the words of his own criticism on Pizarro,' If this be not bombast, what does the word mean?'--v. ii. p. 247.

But we have some more important—though, perhaps, we cannot call them more serious-objections to make than those which relate to mere style. Mr. Campbell seems to have adopted that Aircastle principle of modern biography, which enables a writer, on the incidental mention of a person or a place, to fly off into a region of conjectures and hypotheses, which have hardly more connexion with the original subject than honest Fluellen found between Monmouth and Macedon.

Thus, because

Our great actress's birth-place was Brecon, in South Wales, in a public-house in the High-Street, at the sign of the Shoulder of Mutton,.... where that, or some similar object, in a more substantial shape, was always at the accustomed hour seen roasting at the kitchen fire, on a spit turned by a dog in a wheel, the invariable mode in all Breconian kitchens,

Mr. Campbell feels himself obliged to discover some affinity between Brecon and the drama.

Brecnoc, as far as I can learn, could never boast in modern times of having produced any other distinguished individuals than Mrs. Siddons and Charles Kemble; yet the place is not without its interesting historical, and even dramatic, associations. It was the first ground in Wales on which the Anglo-Norman banner intruded; and the grey moss-grown cairns upon its mountains are still the acknowledged

ledged resting-places of British warriors, whose memory is preserved in the songs of the ancient language of Britain. The last prince of Brecnoc, Bleddyn, who died fighting pro aris et focis against the Anglo-Normans, was the descendant of Sir Caradoch Bris Bras, one of the heroes of old French romance. In the fifteenth century, the lordship of Brecon fell into the possession of the Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham, one of whom acts a conspicuous part in Shakspeare's "Richard the Third." It was in the castle of Brecnoc that Buckingham, in concert with Moreton, Bishop of Ely, plotted the rebellion in favour of Richmond. It appears, however, that Buckingham was no great favourite with the Breconians and other Welshmen; for, after having followed him to the banks of the Severn, they left him to be taken by the adherents of Richard, who beheaded him without ceremony. The fact of so powerful a nobleman having been so wholly abandoned by his followers, would imply that the authority of the feudal lords had not been established in Wales to the same extent as in the rest of the kingdom, and probably never existed at all much beyond the limits of the boroughs and fortified towns. Soon after, when the Earl of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, he being a Tudor and of Welsh extraction, the natives of the principality flocked to his standard, and contributed to the victory of Bosworth.'-vol. i., pp. 27-32. Mark the connexion. Mrs. Siddons-the Shoulder of Mutton'-turnspits-Charles Kemble - Welsh mountains-British cairns—the Anglo-Normans-Prince Bleddyn-Sir Caradoch Bris Bras-French romance-the estate of the Staffords-Bishop Moreton-the river Severn-the feudal system-Milford-Haven -Owen Tudor-and the battle of Bosworth. This, our readers will admit, really exceeds Aircastle himself.

'Aircastle.—I remember Ensign Jack-his father came from Barbadoes-I met him at Treacle's, the great sugar-baker in St. Mary Axe; he took the lease from Alderman Gingham, who served sheriff with Deputy &c.'-Cozeners, act ii.

But this is not all. Mr. Campbell, with his usual luck and good sense, could not but see that the connexion between the Shoulder of Mutton' and Richard the Third was rather too distant to satisfy the enthusiastic admirers of Shakspeare, and he therefore thinks it right to bring the affinity somewhat closer.

'Brecon has also furnished a character for the drama of Shakspeare, namely, that of Sir Hugh Evans, that" remnant of Welsh flannel," in "The Merry Wives of Windsor." He was curate of the priory of Brecon in the days of Queen Elizabeth. He died in 1581, and by a will, which is still among the records of Brecon, left a library, which must have been at that time thought considerable, and which bespeaks him to have been a man of reading. In the same will, he bequeaths his swash-buckler to one of his friends, and appoints Richard Price, Esq., to be overseer of his testament. The last-named gentleman was the son of Sir John Price, of the Priory, a great patron