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of his sovereign. From the highest pinnacle of honour, he was at length cast down; but whether from his own mad ambition, or from the treachery of his foes, does not appear: we should have no doubt however, from the developement of his character in the piece before us, that to the former alone his ruin is to be ascribed. He is now an outlaw, and at the head of a band of pirates. In the first act, he is introduced into a convent near the shore, and there discovers himself to the Prior; who informs him, that the castle of Aldobrand, his mortal enemy, is in its vicinity, to which he will, as a shipwrecked mariner, be conducted, to receive the accustomed hospitality. This Aldobrand, it appears, had married Imogine, who was, in the days of his prosperity, betrothed to Bertram. In the second act, we meet him in the castle, with his comrades, who had unexpectedly escaped the dangers of the storm; and a scene passes between Imogine and Bertram, in which he recalls himself to her me mory. He curses her in an imprecation more bitter than any but a certain noble lord could have conceived. It is quite in the Byron school.

"Bertram. Hear the last prayer of Bertram's broken heart, That heart which thou hast broken, not his foes!

Of thy rank wishes the full scope be on thee

May pomp
and pride shout in thine addered path
Till thou shalt feel and sicken at their hollowness-
May he thou'st wed, be kind and generous to thee
Till thy wrung heart, stabb'd by his noble fondness
Writhe in detesting consciousness of falsehood-
May thy babe's smile speak daggers to that mother
Who cannot love the father of her child,
And in the bright blaze of the festal hall,

When vassals kneel, and kindred smile around thee
May ruined Bertram's pledge hiss in thine ear-
Joy to the proud dame of St. Aldobrand-

While his cold corse doth bleach beneath her towers,
"Imo. (Detaining him) Stay.

"Ber. No.

"Imo. Thou hast a dagger,

"Ber. Not for a woman.

"Imo. (flinging herself on the ground)
It was my prayer to die in Bertram's presence,

But not by words like these

"Ber. (turning back)-on the cold earth!

-I do forgive thee from my inmost soul

(The child of Imogine rushes in and clings to her

"Child. Mother.

"Ber. (eagerly snatching up the child)

God bless thee, child-Bertram hath kissed thy child." P. 29.

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The last incident, when aided by the actor's power, would have been both natural and affecting, had it not been spoilt by the lame and impotent conclusion, "Bertram hath kissed thy child," destroying at once the beauty of the passage by a declaration forced, selfish, and unfeeling, and but ill according with the burst of passion in the former part of the line. In the third act, we are introduced to Aldobrand, who returns home suddenly; Imogine, in the mean time, repairs to the Prior, to reveal her rising passion for Bertram; under the distraction of which, she prays for death. As the reply of the Prior is admirably conceived, we shall with pleasure give it to our readers.

"Prior: And did deserve it, wert thou meet for itArt thou a wife and mother, and canst speak

Of life rejected by thy desperate passion

These bursting tears, wrung hands, and burning words,
Are these the signs of penitence or passion?

Thou comest to me, for to my ear alone
May the deep secret of thy heart be told,
And fancy riot in the luscious poison-
Fond of the misery we paint so well,
Proud of the sacrifice of broken hearts,

We pour on heav'ns dread ear, what man's would shrink
from-

Yea, make a merit of the impious insult,

And wrest the functions of mine holy office

To the foul ministry of earthly passion." P. 37.

She is now acquainted with the return of Aldobrand; but as she proceeds to hail him, she is met by Bertram, who, after much protestation, prevails on her to grant him a meeting of one hour, before they part for ever. In the beginning of the fourth act, we are made acquainted with the guilt of their meeting. Bertram is now informed by his comrades, that Aldobrand is commissioned by the court to seize and put him to death; upon this he is resolved to attack him in his own castle, and seek his utmost revenge on the man he had so deeply injured. We find Imogine in a far different state of mind. With the following speech we were much pleased.

"Imogine in her apartment—a lamp burning on the table-She walks some time in great agitation and then pushes the light away.

"Imo. Away, thou glarest on me, thy light is hateful;
Whom doth the dark wind chide so hollowly?
The very stones shrink from my steps of guilt,
All lifeless things have come to life to curse me:
Oh! that a mountain's weight were cast on me;
Oh! that the wide, wild ocean heaved o'er me;

Oh!

Oh! that I could into the earthy centre

Sink and be nothing.

Sense, memory, feeling, life extinct and swallowed,
With things that are not, or have never been,
Lie down and sleep the everlasting sleep-
(She sinks on the ground.)

If I run mad, some wild word will betray me,
Nay-let me think-what am I?—no, what was I?
(A long pause.)

I was the honoured wife of Aldobrand';

I am the scorned minion of a ruffian." P. 46.

A well-drawn interview now ensues between Aldobrand and his wife, he little suspecting the crime she had committed, and she overwhelmed with his undeserved affection. This is perhaps the best and most original scene in the whole Tragedy. She now encounters Bertram, who discloses to her his purpose of murdering her husband, which foul deed, in spite of all her tears and cries, he perpetrates on the stage, and thus closes the fourth act. The fifth act contains little more than the ravings of Imogine, who, as might reasonably be expected, runs mad and dies, and the desperation of Bertram, who concludes the play by killing himself.

Such is the plot of the Tragedy before us. The interest, if any there can be, clearly ceases at the end of the fourth act. The fifth is a sort of post obit performance, surviving at once the expectation and the feeling both of the spectator and the reader. In addition to this, the mania of poor Imogine is most unmercifully protracted from the last scene in the fourth act, to the very conclusion of the fifth. Mr. Puff himself is outdone, for Tilburina herself and her confidante had but one scene of mad

6

ness between them. To his triumphant enquiry therefore, "Did you ever see any body madder than this?" We must now reply, "Aye, Imogine; to whom Tilburina is but a dowdy' in hysterics." The last act is indeed dreadfully tiresome. We all knew, before the end of the fourth, that nothing now could possibly remain, but for Bertram to be killed, and for Imogine to run mad; the sooner therefore they are both dispatched, the better.

Of the language, we cannot speak in very high terms. Part is indeed highly poetical, once or twice even sublime; but the remainder is overstocked with epithets, overlaid with metaphors, and overpowered with absurdity-bickering glare-weltering ware -done to death-beetling rock-and such sort of strained and unnatural expressions recur far too often to be passed over without disgust. These and the like are scarcely bearable when they

are

are found thinly scattered even in Shakespeare himself, much more intolerable is the thick sown crop of Mr. Maturin. But to shew Mr. M. that we can appreciate beauty, as well as create objections, we shall present our reader with one or two extracts from the first scene, which evince a considerable portion of genius.

"Prior. All peace be with you!-'tis a fearful hour.
"1st Monk. Hath memory a parallel to this?

"2d Monk. How hast thou fared in this most awful time?
"Prior. As one whom fear did not make pitiless :

I bowed me at the cross for those whose heads

Are naked to the visiting blasts of Heav'n

In this its hour of wrath

For the lone traveller on the bill of storms,

For the tossed shipman on the perilous deep;

Till the last peal that thundered o'er mine head

Did force a cry of mercy for myself.

1st Monk. (Eagerly) Think'st thou these rock-based turrets will abide?

2d Monk. Think'st thou they will not topple o'er our heads?

Prior. The hand of him who rules the storm, is o'er us.
1st Monk. Oh, holy prior, this is no earthly storm.
The strife of fiends is on the battling clouds,

The glare of hell is in these sulphurous lightnings,—
This is no earthly storm.

Prior. Peace, peace-thou rash and unadvised man;
Oh! add not to this night of nature's horrors

The darker shadowing of thy wicked fears.

The hand of Heaven, not man, is dealing with us,

And thoughts like thine do make it deal thus sternly." P. 2.

What follows is exceedingly fine.

"Prior.

Almighty power,

Can nought be done? All things are possible-
Wave high your torches on each crag and cliff
Let many lights blaze on our battlements-
Shout to them in the pauses of the storm,
And tell them there is hope-

And let our deep-toned bell its loudest peal
Send cheerly o'er the deep-

"Twill be a comfort to the wretched souls

In their extremity-All things are possible;

Fresh hope may give them strength, and strength deliverance-
I'll hie me forth with you.

* 2d Monk.

3d Monk.

Wilt thou go forth

Hardly the vigorous step of daring youth

May hold its footing on those wave-washed crags:
And how wilt thou abide ?

1st. Monk. 'Tis tempting Heaven.—

Prior. To succour man, not tempt my God; I go;
He will protect his servant:" P. 4.

The first scene between Bertram and Imogine is well conceived throughout, except the concluding curse, with which we have already presented our readers. With the following passage; they cannot fail to be peculiarly pleased. It occurs before Bertram is recognized by Imogine.

"Imo. Strange is thy form, but more thy words are strange

Fearful it seems to hold this parley with thee.

Tell me thy race and country—

Ber.

What avails it?

The wretched have no country: that dear name
Comprizes home, kind kindred, fostering friends,
Protecting laws, all that binds man to man-
But none of these are mine ;-I have no country-
And for my race, the last dread trump shall wake
The sheeted relics of mine ancestry,
Ere trump of herald to the armed lists
In the bright blazon of their stainless coat,
Calls their lost child again." P. 26.

To the characters in the Tragedy before us, and particularly to that of Bertram, we confess that we have some very strong objections. Bertram himself is not only deficient in point of novelty, but is the identical personage who has haunted us under so many forms in the writings of a noble lord. He is Childe Harold, he is the Giaour, he is Selim, he is the Corsair, he is Lara, he is the Renegado. The creative genius of Lord Byron never could invent more than one character, and that one, Mr. Maturin has copied in all its detestable lineaments. It is not however to the introduction of a villainous character into a Tragedy that we offer any objection, for we know the difficulty of writing one without it; but our objection lies to the false colouring in which it is drawn, and to the false feelings which it is intended to excite. Bertram is a man whose mad ambition had caused his disgrace and exile; he becomes a misanthrope and a pirate, and in this very Tragedy, an adulterer and an assassin. Yet, iu one part, the Prior addresses him, as

"sublime even in thy guilt."

We confess that we are too dull to comprehend the "sublimity

of

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