in imitation of the Bacchanalia of the ancients. Ronsard (composed some dithyrambics to celebrate the festival of the goat of Etienne Jodelle; and another, entitled "Our travels to Arcueil." However, this Bacchanalian freak did not finish as it ought, where it had begun, among the poets. Several ecclesiastics sounded the alarm, and one Chandieu accused Ronsard with having performed an idolatrous sacrifice; and it was easy to accuse the moral habits of fifty poets assembled together, who were far, doubtless, from being irreproachable. They repented for some time of their classical sacrifice of a goat to Tragedy. Hardi, the French Lope de Vega, wrote 800 dramatic pieces from 1600 to 1637; his imagination was the most fertile possible; but so wild and unchecked, that though its extravagances are very amusing, they served as so many instructive lessons to his successors. One may form a notion of his violation of the unities by his piece "La Force du Sang." In the first act Leocadia is carried off and ravished. In the second she is sent back with an evident sign of pregnancy. In the third she lies in, and at the close of this act her son is about ten years old. In the fourth, the father of the child acknowledges him; and in the fifth, lamenting his son's unhappy fate, he marries Leocadia. Such are the pieces in the infancy of the drama. Rotrou was the first who ventured to introduce several persons in the same scene; before his time they rarely exceeded two persons; if a third appeared, he was usually a mute actor, who never joined the other two. The state of the theatre was even then very rude; the most lascivious embraces were publicly given and taken; and Rotrou even ventured to introduce a naked page in the scene, who in this situation holds a dialogue with one of his heroines. In another piece," Scedase, ou l'hospitalité violée," Hardi makes two young Spartans carry off Scedase's two daughters, ravish them on the stage, and, violating them in the side scenes, the spectators heard their cries and their complaints. Cardinal Richelieu made the theatre one of his favourite pursuits, and though not successful as a dramatic writer, his encouragement of the drama gradually gave birth to genius. Scudery was the first who introduced the twenty-four hours from Aristotle; and Mairet studied the construction of the fable, and the rules of the drama. They yet groped in the dark, and their beauties were yet only occasional; Corneille, Racine, Molière, Crebillon, and Voltaire perfected the French drama. In the infancy of the tragic art in our country, the bowl and dagger were considered as the great instruments of a sublime pathos; and the "Die all" and " Die nobly" of the exquisite and affecting tragedy of Fielding were frequently realised in our popular dramas. Thomas Goff, of the university of Oxford, in the reign of James I., was considered as no contemptible tragic poet: he concludes the first part of his Courageous Turk, by promising a second, thus: If this first part, gentles! do like you well, The second part shall greater murthers tell. Specimens of extravagant bombast might be selected from his tragedies. The following speech of Amurath the Turk, who coming on the stage, and seeing an appearance of the heavens being on fire, comets and blazing stars, thus addresses the heavens,' ," which seem to have been in as mad a condition as the poet's own mind: How now, ye heavens! grow you So proud, that you must needs put on curled locks, In the Raging Turk, or Bajazet the Second, he is introduced with this most raging speech :— Am I not emperor? he that breathes a no He would scale heaven, and when he had got beyond the utmost sphere, Besiege the concave of this universe, And hunger-starve the gods till they confessed These plays went through two editions: the last printed in 1656. The following passage from a similar bard is as precious. The king in the play exclaims, By all the ancient gods of Rome and Greece, I love my daughter! -better than my niece! If any one should ask the reason why, I'd tell them--Nature makes the stronger tie! One of the rude French plays, about 1600, is entitled "La Rebellion, ou mescontentment des Grenouilles contre Jupiter," in five acts. The subject of this tragi-comic piece is nothing more than the fable of the frogs who asked Jupiter for a king. In the pantomimical scenes of a wild fancy, the actors were seen croaking in their fens, or climbing up the steep ascent of Olympus; they were dressed so as to appear gigantic frogs; and in pleading their cause before Jupiter and his court, the dull humour was to croak sublimely, whenever they did not agree with their judge. Clavigero, in his curious history of Mexico, has given Acosta's account of the Mexican theatre, which appears to resemble the first scenes among the Greeks, and these French frogs, but with more fancy and taste. Acosta writes, "The small theatre was curiously whitened, adorned with boughs, and arches made of flowers and feathers, from which were suspended many birds, rabbits, and other pleasing objects. The actors exhibited burlesque characters, feigning themselves deaf, sick with colds, lame, blind, crippled, and addressing an idol for the return of health. The deaf people answered at cross-purposes; those who had colds by coughing, and the lame by halting; all recited their complaints and misfortunes, which produced infinite mirth among the audience. Others appeared under the names of different little animals; some disguised as beetles, some like toads, some like lizards, and upon encountering each other, reciprocally explained their employments, which was highly satisfactory to the people, as they performed their parts with infinite ingenuity. Several little boys also, belonging to the temple, appeared in the disguise of butterflies, and birds of various colours, and mounting upon the trees which were fixed there on purpose, little balls of earth were thrown at them with slings, occasioning many humorous incidents to the spectators." Something very wild and original appears in this singular exhibition; where at times the actors seem to have been spectators, and the spectators were actors. THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS. As a literary curiosity, can we deny a niche to that "obliquity of distorted wit," of Barton Holyday, who has composed a strange comedy, in five acts, performed at Christ Church, Oxford, 1630, not for the entertainment, as an anecdote records, of James the First? The title of the comedy of this unclassical classic, for Holyday is known as the translator of Juvenal with a very learned commentary, is TEXNOTAMIA, or the Marriage of the Arts, 1630, quarto; extremely dull, excessively rare, and extraordinarily high-priced among collectors. It may be exhibited as one of the most extravagant inventions of a pedant. Who but a pedant could have conceived the dull fancy of forming a comedy, of five acts, on the subject of marrying the Arts! They are the dramatis persona of this piece, and the bachelor of arts describes their intrigues and characters. His actors are Polites, a magistrate; Physica; - Astronomia, daughter to Physica;Ethicus, an old man ;-Geographus, a traveller and courtier, in love with Astronomia ;-Arithmetica, in love with Geometres;-Logicus;-Grammaticus, a schoolmaster;-Poeta ; -Historia, in love with Poeta ;-Rhetorica, in love with Logicus;-Melancholico, Poeta's man;-Phantastes, servant to Geographus ;-Choler, Grammaticus's man. All these refined and abstract ladies and gentlemen have as bodily feelings, and employ as gross language, as if they had been every-day characters. A specimen of his grotesque dulness may entertain: Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit. Geographus opens the play with declaring his passion to Astronomia, and that very rudely indeed! See the pedant wreathing the roses of Love! Geog. Come, now you shall, Astronomia. Ast. What shall I, Geographus ? Geog. Kisse! Ast. What, in spite of my teeth! Geog. No, not so! I hope you do not use to kisse with your teeth. Ast. Marry, and I hope I do not use to kisse without them. Geog. Ay, but my fine wit-catcher, I mean you do not show your teeth when you kisse." He then kisses her, as he says, in the different manners of a French, Spanish and Dutch kiss. He wants to take off the zone of Astronomia. She begs he would not fondle her like an elephant as he is; and Geographus says again, "Won't you then ?" Ast. Won't I what? Geo. Be kinde? Ast. Be kinde! How ?" Fortunately Geographus is here interrupted by Astronomia's mother Physica. This dialogue is a specimen of the whole piece: very flat, and very gross. Yet the piece is still curious,-not only for its absurdity, but for that sort of ingenuity, which so whimsically contrived to bring together the different arts; this pedantic writer, however, owes more to the subject, than the subject derived from him; without wit or humour, he has at times an extravagance of invention. As for instance,-Geographus and his man Phantastes describe to Poeta the lying wonders they pretend to have witnessed; and this is one : "Phan. Sir, we met with a traveller that could speak six languages at the same instant. Poeta. How? at the same instant, that's impossible! Phan. Nay, sir, the actuality of the performance puts it beyond all contradiction. With his tongue he'd so vowel you out as smooth Italian as any man breathing; with his eye he would sparkle forth the proud Spanish; with his nose blow out most robustious Dutch; the creaking of his highheeled shoe would articulate exact Polonian; the knocking of his shinbone feminine French; and his belly would grumble most pure and scholar-like Hungary." This, though extravagant without fancy, is not the worst part of the absurd humour which runs through this pedantic comedy. The classical reader may perhaps be amused by the following strange conceits. Poeta, who was in love with Historia, capriciously falls in love with Astronomia, and thus compares his mistress: Her brow is like a brave heroic line |