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Now to the Lord sing praises,

All you within this place,

And with true love and brotherhood

Each other now embrace;

This holy tide of Christmas

All others doth deface.

O tidings, &c.

There is something in the old carol more heart-stirring than the subdued eloquence of one of our best of modern sacred poets:

Oh Saviour, whom this holy morn
Gave to our world below;

To mortal want and labour born,
And more than mortal woe!

Incarnate Word! by every grief,
By each temptation tried,
Who lived to yield our ills relief,
And to redeem us died!

If gaily clothed and proudly fed,
In dangerous wealth we dwell;
Remind us of Thy manger bed
And lowly cottage cell!

If press'd by poverty severe,
In envious want we pine,
Oh may the Spirit whisper near,
How poor a lot was Thine!

Through fickle fortune's various scene

From sin preserve us free!

Like us Thou hast a mourner been,

May we rejoice with Thee.

HEBER.

Carols belonged to the time of an earnest church, which celebrated Christmas with anthem, and hymn, and homily; which reckoned it devotion that there should be hospitality in every house; which delighted to see all the human family happy in common for one day; which rejoiced in full bowls for all comers; and tolerated even "the lord of misrule" as one of the general extravagancies of a time when the true business of man was to be happy.

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325. THE MODERN DRAMATIC POETS.

PART I.

[IN the preceding volumes we have given scenes from some of the great dramatic writers who were contemporary with Shakspere-from Massinger, Webster, Ben Jonson, Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others. The golden age of the English Drama did not last for more than sixty years. After an interval in which the Stage, in common with many other of the graces and refinements of life, was proscribed by a misdirected though sincere zeal, the Restoration gave us a degenerate and corrupt drama-false in its principles of Art, debasing in its gross licentiousness. The Augustan age, as it used to be called, brought its brilliant Comedy, in which Wit went hand in hand with Profligacy-meretricious sisters-and its feeble Tragedy, which rested its claims upon its dissimilarity to Shakspere. From Cato to Irene we had no serious drama that was not essentially based upon French models-declamation taking the place of passion, and monotonous correctness substituted for poetical fervour. In our own times, and in a great degree by living authors, the imitation of the old drama, or, to speak more correctly, the knowledge of the principles upon which the old dramatists worked, has given us a dramatic literature which will not, we venture to think, be forgotten by coming generations. We cannot therefore, with any sense of justice, close this Series of HalfHours from the best Authors' without some notice, however imperfect, of the dramatic poetry of the nineteenth century, represented, as it so adequately is, in the works of Joanna Baillie, Landor, Coleridge, Byron, Milman, Knowles, Bulwer Lytton, Hunt, Talfourd, and Taylor.]

DE MONFORT.

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JOANNA BAILLIE.

[MISS BAILLIE'S Series of Plays to delineate the stronger Passions of the Mind' was the first great attempt to cast off the frigid conventionalities that had long encumbered all modern dramatic poetry. Here was a woman of genius working upon a bold theory. The notion of making the conduct of a drama wholly rest upon the development of one intense master passion appears to us a mistake. Passions, as they exist in actual life, and as they are portrayed by the greatest poetical revealers of man's nature, are complicated and modified by the antagonism of motives and circumstances. Othello is not simply jealousMacbeth not merely ambitious. It is to this cause that we may perhaps

VOL. IV.

B B

attribute the circumstance that one only, we believe, of Joanna Baillie's Plays has been acted, although they were written for the stage, as every drama must be that has a dramatic vitality. But, whatever may be the defects of their scenic construction, they are, in many respects, models of strong and earnest dialogue, rejecting all cumbrous ornament, and really poetical through its unaffected simplicity. This was a revolution in dramatic composition. It is half a century since these Plays on the Passions' were published. Their authoress has seen many changes in literary reputation; but none in which she has not been recognised with the honours which very few can permanently win and wear.]

6

De Monfort, from which the following scene is extracted, is founded upon the passion of hatred. De Monfort has fostered, from early years, a hatred of Rezenvelt-a hatred which he feels to be unjust and at variance with his own better nature. His noble sister, Jane de Monfort, thus struggles to expel the demon which torments and finally destroys him :

De Mon. No more, my sister, urge me not again ;
My secret troubles cannot be reveal'd.

From all participation of its thoughts

My heart recoils: I pray thee be contented.

Jane. What! must I, like a distant humble friend,
Observe thy restless eye, and gait disturb'd,
In timid silence, whilst, with yearning heart,
I turn aside to weep? Oh, no, De Monfort!
A nobler task thy nobler mind will give;
Thy true intrusted friend I still shall be.

De Mon. Ah, Jane, forbear! I cannot e'en to thee.
Jane. Then fie upon it! fie upon it, Monfort!
There was a time when e'en with murder stain'd,
Had it been possible that such dire deed

Could e'er have been the crime of one so piteous,

Thou wouldst have told it me.

De Mon. So would I now-but ask of this no more.

All other troubles but the one I feel

I had disclosed to thee. I pray thee spare me.

It is the secret weakness of my nature.

Jane. Then secret let it be; I urge no farther.

The eldest of our valiant father's hopes,

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