THE DRAMA.

FAZIO; OR, THE ITALIAN WIFE-A TRAGEDY. BY H. H. MILMAN.

We have some difficulty in speaking of this tragedy. If we compare it with the wretched nothings that have reigned paramount in our theatres for these ten years past, we shall never have done praising it; but if we judge of it as of what it professes to be, "an attempt at reviving our old national drama," we shall never have done finding fault. Indeed this attempt to revive the old drama, has been the author's stumbling-block all through. He has powers that would have enabled him to construct a fine tragedy, if he had chosen to rely on them; but when he betrays a want of confidence in them, he must not wonder at their deserting him. Why should he have taken as a model " our national drama?" He might have gone a nearer and much surer way to work. There was still a better model to be found, the model from which the writers of that very drama constructed their everlasting works-nature. If Mr. Milman had studied nature as closely as he has the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth, he might have gone nigh to produce a work that should be to the nineteenth century what theirs were to the sixteenth and seventeenth; but, as it is, Fazio has the antiquated dress of the one, the stiff and constrained manners of the other, a body made up of something of each, and the soul of neither. There is a perpetual appearance of effort in this tragedy. The writer's poetry does not "ooze" from him "as a gum," but is distilled, drop by drop, by the alembic of art. He moves gracefully we admit; but he moves in fetters. In common life, the endeavour to be graceful, even if it succeed, always gives a tinge of affectation: and it does so in Fazio. We are never sure that the author is what he seems, or means what he says. In one word, he writes like an author.

To come to particulars, Bianca, the character which the author has laboured more than any other, is, perhaps for that very reason, the least of all to our taste. Mr. Milman endeavours to interest us in her favour, and yet he draws her with the two most fatal mental deformities that can befall a woman and a wife-selfishness and want of confidence. She loves Fazio, not because he deserves to be loved, not because he is Fazio, but because he is

VOL. VII.

her Fazio. After two years of undoubted and undoubting constancy and affection, when he but speaks of another woman, she suspects and threatens; she but conjectures that he is untrue to her, and instantly denounces him to justice, for crimes of which he was not guilty; she contemplates the murder of her own children, lest when she dies she should miss them in heaven-as if so violent and unfeminine a lady could find heaven any where! The character is drawn with considerable force and consistency; and we dare not say that it is an unnatural one: but we are sure that it is most unamiable. We mention this, because the author seems to think otherwise; and makes the whole interest of the piece depend on her. But he does not, we suppose, call this a part of his "attempt at reviving our old national drama." Where will he find any hints at such traits of character among the females of that drama? We mean among those who are intended to be amiable. Is it in the divine Juliana, in the Double Marriage; or the divinely-human Aspasia, in the Maid's Tragedy? Is it in Desdemonathe abused and injured, yet gentle, and obedient, and loving Desdemona?-She whose only answer to suspicion and outrage, is a renewed vow of love to the man who has inflicted them on her, even "though he should cast me off to beggarly divorcement;" and whose only return for a guiltless death at his hands, is expending her last breath in a wilful and deliberate falsehood to shield him from obloquy?-Is it in the quiet but deep-hearted Ophelia; or the gently heroical Imogen?-This "attempt at reviving our old national drama" was an unfortunate passage in Mr. Milman's preface.

The character of Fazio is, with all its faults, more pleasing, and, we hope, more natural, than that of Bianca. His silent and deep repentance, his uncomplaining resignation, and, above all, his unupbraiding affection towards his wife, after the condemnation which she had brought upon him, almost make amends for his crimes. He utters no word of recrimination; but his first greeting, after her accusal of him, is " my own Bianca!" This is using "my own" in the true and beautiful sense of the words. How different from the meaning which she attaches to them in her peevish and passionate exclamations, when she but suspects

that he has injured her!" My Fazio"-mine own-mine onlynot Aldabella's."

At present we have not room for further remarks on particular parts of this tragedy, except to say that all that is seen and heard of the short character of Bartolo seems to us to be totally unnatural and bad.

On reading what we have written, we find that by having been forced, against our will, to compare Fazio with works of such transcendent beauty in the same class, we have not conveyed any thing like so favourable an impression of it, or its author's talents, as we feel.

Some detached parts of it are very beautiful; such as the description of Aldabella in the first scene:

-Aldabella!

The gracious! the melodious! oh, the words
Laugh'd on her lips; the motion of her smiles
Shower'd beauty, as the air-caress'd spray
The dews of morning; and her stately steps
Were light as though a winged angel trod
Over earth's flowers, and fear'd to brush away
Their delicate hues, ay, e'en her very robes
Were animate and breathing, as they felt
The presence of her loveliness spread around
Their thin and gauzy clouds, ministering freely
Officious duty on the shrine where nature

Hath lavish'd all her skill.

ACT 1, SCENE 1.

and the soliloquy of Bianca at the beginning of the third act:

Bian. Not all the night, not all the long, long night,

Not come to me! not send to me! not think of me!

Like an unrighteous and unburied ghost,

I wander
up and down these long arcades.
Oh, in our old, poor narrow home, if haply
He linger'd late abroad, domestic things
Close and familiar, crowded all around me;
The ticking of the clock, the flapping motion
Of the green lattice, the gray curtains' folds,
The hangings of the bed myself had wrought,
Yea, e'en his black and iron crucibles

Were to me as friends. But here, oh here,
Where all is coldly, comfortlessly costly,
All strange, all new in uncouth gorgeousness,
Lofty and long, a wider space for misery—
E'en

my own footsteps on these marble floors
Are unaccustom'd, unfamiliar sounds.-
Oh, I am here so wearily miserable,
That I should welcome my apostate Fazio
Though he were

Now, but now

I went in to my children. The first sounds
They murmur'd in their evil-dreaming sleep
Was a faint mimicry of the name of father:
I could not kiss them, my lips were so hot.
The very household slaves are leagued against me,
And do beset me with their wicked floutings,
"Comes my lord home to-night?" and when I say

"I know not," their coarse pity makes my heart-strings
Throb with the agony..
ACT III, SCENE 1.

and there are two or three fine touches of nature, particularly that where Bianca forgets the name of the old senator,—“ him— him-him," &c. Act III, scene 1;-and that where she keeps watching for the duke's order to seize the person of Fazio, and when it is given, rushes to the officer, and exclaims

You'll find him at the marchesa Aldabella's;
Bring him away-no mercy-no delay—
Nay not an instant-not time for a kiss,

A parting kiss. (Aside.) Now have I widow'd her,
As she has widow'd me! Now come what will,

Their curst entwining arms are riven asunder!

ACT III, SCENE 2.

Upon the whole, comparing it with the dramas of our own day, Fazio is undoubtedly superior to any that have been written for the stage, with the exception of miss Baillie's De Montfort, and perhaps Mr. Coleridge's Remorse; and quite equal to any that have been written for the closet only, with one exception-that of Count Julian, a work possessing rare and admirable beauties, though but little known, and most imperfectly appreciated.*

* Mr. Riley has just published the first Philadelphia, from the third London, edition of this tragedy.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE.

Wm. Baldwin, M.D., a gentleman who has devoted much attention to the botany of our country, is preparing for the press Miscellaneous Sketches of Georgia and East Florida-to which will be added, a Descriptive Catalogue of New Plants, with notices of the works of Pursh, Elliott, and Nuttal; and an Appendix, containing some account of the Vegetable Productions on the Rio de la Plata.

Messrs. Carey & Son have published a Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; and of their Institutions, Religious and Civil. The author of this work, Mons. J. A. Dubois, as we learn from the Edinburgh Review, is one of those French emigrants who fled from their country during the storms of the revolution. He chose India for the place of his exile; and employed himself in the humble, but honourable and useful labours of a missionary. He himself informs us, that the present work was composed after "a residence of between seventeen and eighteen years among the people whom he describes, and a close and familiar intercourse with persons of every caste and condition of life, through the great number of districts which he had traversed." He adds: " during the long period that I remained amongst the natives, I made it my constant rule to live as they did; conforming myself exactly in all things to their manners, to their style of living and clothing, and even to most of their prejudices. In this way, I became quite familiar with the various tribes that compose the Indian nation, and acquired the confidence of those whose aid was most necessary for the purposes of my work." The abbé, with opportunities peculiar to himself, has been a pretty diligent observer, and bears all the marks of a sincere and faithful reporter. The manuscript of his work was offered to the Madras government, and by them very judiciously purchased; both because the author himself was destitute of the means of publishing it, and because the servants of the company, to whom the information it contained was of the highest value, have frequently so little means of acquiring it, that they must, in