on her arm, one day stopt near her, in the High-Street of Edinburgh, and, hearing her speak, said, "Ah! weel do I ken that sweet voice, that made me greet sae sair the streen."'—p. 257.

The next is sufficiently characteristic of mine own romantic town':

I remember Mrs. Siddons describing to me the same scene of her probation on the Edinburgh boards with no small humour. The grave attention of my Scottish countrymen, and their canny reservation of praise till they were sure she deserved it, she said, had wellnigh worn out her patience. She had been used to speak to animated clay; but she now felt as if she had been speaking to stones. Successive flashes of her elocution, that had always been sure to electrify the south, fell in vain on those northern flints. At last, as I well remember, she told me she coiled up her powers to the most emphatic possible utterance of one passage, having previously vowed in her heart, that if this could not touch the Scotch, she would never again cross the Tweed.* When it was finished, she paused, and looked to the audience. The deep silence was broken only by a single voice exclaiming, "That's no bad! This ludicrous parsimony of praise convulsed the Edinburgh audience with laughter. But the laugh was followed by such thunders of applause, that, amidst her stunned and nervous agitation, she was not without fears of the galleries coming down.'-Ibid. p. 260.

We conclude what we have to say of this extraordinary woman by expressing our deliberate and well-considered opinion that she was the greatest tragic actress that ever lived; that, at the several periods of her life, she played the appropriate characters with the greatest individual excellence; and that she carried and maintained a general superiority both of mind and manner, higher, farther, and longer than any other woman was ever able to attain. Her personal character, in a station so liable to suspicion—it would be perhaps a vulgar error to call it temptation-was not only blameless but exemplary, and in private life she was as good and as amiable as in her public profession she was transcendently great. Can we say more?

One concluding word to Mr. Campbell.-We fear that he will be dissatisfied with our criticism, because we know how hard it is to induce a man to be dissatisfied with himself; but, as we have not made a single stricture without having produced the evidence on which it is founded, we fearlessly appeal to our readers-nay, we should almost venture to appeal to Mr. Campbell himselfwhether the instances and examples we have produced do not

*We once heard Mrs. Siddons give what Mr. Campbell may think a very prosaic account of the beneficial influence of cheers on a player. Some one remarked, They give one hearts'—' Aye,' said she, and they do what is still better-they give one breath.

amply

amply justify the observations which it has been our painful duty to make. It is not given to any man to excel in all the walks of literature: Mr. Campbell is a distinguished poet-he has written a very popular poem, and several memorable odes; he is a man of undoubted genius-and he may well afford, without any diminution of his real and merited fame, to be recorded as, in every sense of the word,-supposing him to have actually written the book which bears his name-the worst theatrical historian we have ever read.

ART. V. -Mischief.

Section First, 1830; Section Second, 1834. pp. 94. 8vo. London.

THIS production is trifling in bulk; and among its contents there are worse things than mere trifling-some very heavy attempts at humour, interspersed with ungenerous sarcasm-and several passages of culpable indelicacy. These last, however, occur in the first section, which was printed three years agoand as they are apologized for in the preface to the second, we need not allow them to prevent us from now acknowledging that the author, amidst all his levities, as well as dulnesses, has exhibited some specimens of true poetical excellence. He appears to us to have no requisite for satire-his wit is always clumsy and nothing can be more unfortunate than his efforts to blend the ludicrous and the serious after the fashion of Don Juan. But we think it worth while to assure him of our conviction, that if he were to drop all notions of merriment, and treat with zeal and devotion a theme of serious interest upon a considerable scale, we have no doubt whatever that he might raise himself to no unenviable place in contemporary literature. He would himself, we dare say, think it very absurd were we to bestow much of our space upon his Mischief; he must feel that he has as yet played with his strength, and asserted no adequate claim upon detailed criticism.

His object appears to be neither more nor less than to illustrate the very recondite fact that errors of a certain sort are visited, among the highest classes of society, with stern and fatal severity upon yielding woman, while hardly an affectation of rebuke falls to the share of the betrayer, man. This is the everlasting theme of our novelists of fashionable life-and of their management of it we, and all the rest of the world, are now heartily weary: but our author has brought out his contrasts briefly and potently, and perhaps the grace and energy of his stanzas may arrest attention in some quarters. We would more particularly recommend them to

the

the consideration of our poor-law commissioners. They tell us, and parliament seems inclined to believe them, that to check this kind. of mischief, the only plan is to throw all the punishment on the woman. The other plan of dividing the penalty between the accomplices has been tried, they say, for hundreds of years-and nevertheless the mischief goes on: a wiser, though apparently a less equitable, system must now therefore be adopted. Did it never occur to these worthy logicians that their new system has been, in point of fact, long established as regards mischief in the high places of the earth—and just to pause for a moment, and consider what its effect has been there, before recommending its application on that wider sphere where human passions, in themselves probably much the same all the world over, have comparatively few and feeble barriers? How tremendous is the doom of the erring matron in the upper world, we all see and know. Has the certainty of that utter ruin in case of detection been found, in practice, to diminish the array of delinquency?

The hero, Prince Alexis von Schaffhausenstein, seduces Eve, the fair and tender wife of Sir Adam Tudor, a baronet of Essex, whose talk is of bullocks. He deserts her-is challenged by Sir Adam-meets the injured husband at Battersea, and severely wounds him. As soon as it is ascertained that the baronet's life is not in danger, the prince's cabriolet re-appears in St. James's Street

'Sing Te Diabolum, ye tribes of Hell,
With echoing paæans shake your sulphur-
ous vaults!

Ye kindred tribes of Fashion round Pall-
Mall,

And flirt and gambol with your doves and kites;

Dearest of Men, with all his little faults. Illuminate Almack's! more lights! more lights!

He comes! the pride of Clubs! the very soul of White's!'-p. 6.

Exult! for, safe from marital assaults, The charming Foreigner returns to waltz We pass some poor-enough verses on the different clubs, of which the author does not happen to be a member. Now for the lady :

The poet chooses to involve his frail heroine in the catastrophe of the Amphitrite at Boulogne, on the 31st of August, last year -and we can have no doubt that he must himself have been an eye-witness of the scene which he has described.

'Twas then that down the Channel's By some strange turn of Fortune blind flashing waters