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of the comparative merits of the two great tragedians. Mr. KEA, as the crook-backed tyrant, was by no means so great as we have at other times seen him, at least, in the early, and silently guilty scenes; but in the last act, in which Richard's mind is torn with the desertions of high friends and the workings of powerful thought. he was as great as ever. We do not think Mr. KEAN can repress his feelings when once they are grandly called upon;-indeed we have heard from good authority, that he never performs a noble and ambitious part, without being stirred into a belief, by his own mental impetuosity, that he is the very character he assumes:-and indeed all his actions prove it to us. There never was any thing on the stage equal to his whole figure and attitude in Richard the Third on the eve of battle. He stands more like a grand picture from the pencil of one of the old masters, than any thing living in this common place age-That is, his features are more keen,-more intense in their complexion, more quietly impressive,-than those of any modern English face. There is very little expression, generally speaking, in the countenances of the present race of men,-certainly none in comparison with those calm, eloquent breathing faces of the early Italians, which are brought down to us by the hand of Titian. Mr. KEAN stands, in the scene we have alluded to, surrounded by his generals, but communing only with his own gigantic thought. His eye,-dark, wild, and piercing,-is fixed, but on no visible object ;It looks upon the air, and seems to live upon things past, or to come. It seems to hold the concentrated rays of the mind, and to have a deep and desolate feeling of its own. His eyebrows come down edgy and contracted:-his face is pale and full of loneliness; and his lips are compressed with an immense feeling.-The effect of all this is perfected by a fine flow of hair, falling round his face upon his shoulders, and lying there in rich black curls. This scene ought to be longer, the beauty of it is too fleeting. We are convinced, now that we have seen Mr. KEAN and Mr. KEMBLE so closely together,that the style of the former is the warm, the moving, the intellectual, the true one;-and that the style of the latter is the fixed, the cold and the false one. 'KEAN impresses us with all the enthusiasm of life,

KEMBLE yields to us only a picture of dignified decay. KEAN fills the stage with a mental gaiety, and spurs the souls of his hearers into a delightful madness:- while KEMBLE only becomes elaborate in giving all the methodism of acting, and raises in his audience nought but a stately indifference or a stoical delight. KEAN is all spirit and life, and could "wallow naked in December's snow, by bare remembrance of the summer's heat;"-he never chills,-but hold on, in his matchless race, untried. KEMBLE must give his limbs a quarter of au hour's notice ere they will consent to stir,-and prepare for the turu of his head five minutes before it is required. His mind appears to have been kept cold all the day, for the use of the summer night, in that ice-house his body,-and is served up as a chilling luxury to the helpless senses of people of fashion. KEMBLE could hold a fire in his hand, by thinking on the frosty Caucasus." He never forgets himself, and so become lively by mistake,-nor suffer his voice by accident to give up its conventicle sing-song,' and take to natural speaking. He is of marble,-and therefore never disgraces the stuff he is made of, by any undue warmth, lightness or motion. Of all characters, however, which Mr. KEMBLE acts, there is none so heavy,

stiff, hard and unweildy as his King John;-and we very much wonder that he should not have had more respect for his fame than to have chosen this part to play in the night after KEAN'S Richard the Third. This change from violent heat to excessive cold, may be very national, but it is extremely trying and dangerous. Mr. KEMBLE will do himself more mischief, by sticking up these pillars of ice in the very face of KEAN's fire, than by any other unwise thing he could do: -they will thaw, and run to waste. In this remark on Mr. KEMBLE we have noticed the defective side of his style only,-and in comdaring his style with Mr. KEAN's, we can only do so;-but in a future paper, we shall take an opportunity of remarking upon his performance of one of his Roman characters, and consequently pointing out what we consider the merits of his acting. In parts, such as Penruddock, or Brutus, or Coriolanus, which are in themselves settled, cold, or lofty, there is no one to equal KEMBLE. His Penruddock is the only specimen of baffled affection surviving the strife of time, on the stage. His heart there, though broken, seems to "brokenly live on." He strikes sorrow into us by the dint of his very frozenness. He looks like some magnificent creature hurled out by the hand of Despair into a fearful solitude, to which his spirit, by its own greatness, becomes reconciled. His Brutus and Coriolanus are great and majestic, and remind us of "the most high and palmy state of Rome." These kind of characters, however, are in themselves artificial, and of course quite secondary to those of natural feeling and passion. If a Temple were erected in honor of the drama, the difference between KEAN and KEMBLE would be immediately seen;-KEMBLE Would take his stand by the side of some great column, at the head of the steps, and look down upon the crowds beneath him with an eye of confident grandeur:-KEAN would come down from the pillars, and bustle amongst the people.

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From Mr. Southey's letter to Mr. W. Smith, we give the following extracts:

"For the book itself, (Wat Tyler), I deny that it is a seditious performance; for it places in the mouths of the personages who are introduced nothing more than a correct statement of their real principles. That it is a mischievous publication, I know; the errors which it contains being especially dangerous at this time. Therefore I came forward without hesitation to avow it; to claim it as my own property, which had never been alienated; and to suppress it. And I am desirous that my motives in thus acting should not be misunderstood. The piece was written under the influence of opinions which I have long since outgrown, and repeatedly disclaimed, but for which I have never affected to feel either shame or contrition; they were taken up conscientiously in early youth, they were acted upon in disregard to all worldly considerations, and they were left behind in the same straight-forward course, as I advanced in years. It was written when

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republicanism was confined to a very small number of the educated classes; when those who were known to entertain such opinions were exposed to personal danger from the populace; and when a spirit of anti-Jacobinism was predominant, which I cannot characterise more truly than by saying, that it was as unjust and intolerant, though not quite as ferocious, as the Jacobinism of the present day."

"In my youth, when my stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a regular scholastic education, when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue's end, I fell into the political opinions which the French Revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and following those opinions with ardour, wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time, and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for their root was in the heart, and not in the understanding), I wrote Wat Tyler, as one who was impa tient of all the oppressions that are done under the Sun.' The subject was injudiciously chosen, and it was treated as might be expected hy a youth of twenty, in such times, who regarded only one side of the question. There is no other mis-representation. The sentiments of the historical characters are correctly stated. Were I now to dra matize the same story, there would be much to add but little to alter. I should not express those sentiments less strongly, but I should oppose to them more enlarged views of the nature of man and the progress of society. I should set forth with equal force the oppressions of the feudal system, the excesses of the insurgents, and the treachery of the Government; and hold up the errors and crimes which were then committed, as a warning for this and for future ages. I should write as a man, not as a stripling; with the same heart, and the same desires, but with a ripened understanding and competent stores of knowledge."

"Such, Sir, are in part the views of the man whom you have traduced. Had you perused his writings, you could not have mistaken them, and I am willing to believe that if you had done this, and formed an opinion for yourself, instead of retaining that of wretches who are at once the panders of malice and the pioneers of rebellion, you would neither have been so far forgetful of your parliamentary character, nor of the decencies between man and man, as so wantonly, so unjustly, and in such a place, to have attacked one who had given you no provocation."

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"Did you imagine that I should sit down quietly under the wrong, and treat your attack with the same silent contempt as I have done all the abuse and calumny with which, from one party or the other, Anti-jacobins or Jacobins, I have been assailed in daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, since the year 1796, when I first became known to the public? The place where you made the attack, and the manner of the attack, prevent this."

"How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a favourable acceptance from after ages, time will decide; but a name, which whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some account of his life will always be prefixed to his works, and transferred to literary histo

ries, and to the biographical dictionaries, not only of this, but of other countries. There it will be related, that he lived in the bosom of his family, in absolute retirement; that in all his writings there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for the amelioratiou of mankind; and that the only charge which malice could bring against him was, that as he grew older his opinions altered concerning the means by which that amelioration was to be effected."

MISCELLANEA.

We never remember to have read any passage which gave us so fine an idea of solitariness, as that one in the Arabian Nights Entertainments; in which Zobeide wanders about a city and through the halls of its palace and finds the inhabitants turned into marble. At night she lies down to rest, and is started with hearing one voice reading the Alcoran. The voice sounds hollow and lonely through the rooms, and it "tells of life, though but in one." The effect is grandly terrific-a single voice is heard, unexpectedly, breathing in the midst of darkness and marble-one voice mocking at silence!

The following beautiful passage is from Coleridge's Wallenstein, and will delight many of our readers :

"For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place,
Delightfully dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,
And spirits, and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient Poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The power, the beauty, and the Majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebly spring,

Or chasms, or watery depths;-all these bave vanished,
They live no longer in the faith of reason!

But still the heart do need a language still,

Doth the old fustinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or Gods, that used to share this Earth,
With Man as with their friend; and to the lover,
Yonder they move, from yonder visible Sky,
Shoot influence down; and even at this day,
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings every thing that's fair!”

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