sandra, in her pride, her love, and her alternate schemes for saving and destroying Cleomenes,-as furnishing the original hint of the much more highly finished character of Zara in Congreve's Mourning Bride."

The conduct of the piece, being calculated to evince the Spartan virtue, patience, and courage, contains a long train of hopes disappointed, seducing temptations resisted, sufferings patiently endured, and finally closed by a voluntary death. There is no particular object to which the attention of the audience is fixed,

Car. But thus unblown, my boy?

Hengo. I go the straighter

My journey to the Gods. Sure I shall know you
When you come, uncle?

Car. Yes, boy.

Hengo. And I hope

Thou royal graft, farewell for ever!-Time and death,

Ye've done your worst. Fortune, now see, now proudly
Pluck off thy veil, and view thy triumph; look,

Look what thou hast brought this land to.-Oh, fair flower,
How lovely yet thy ruins show! how sweetly
Even death embraces thee! The peace of heaven,
The fellowship of all great souls, be with thee!

The Tragedy of Bonduca, act v.

This extract is perhaps longer than necessary; but, independently of its extreme beauty, it serves to justify the observation in the text, that Dryden had the recollection of Hengo strongly in his memory while composing the character of Cleonidas. Both are extenuated by hunger, and both killed insidiously by a cowardly enemy; and the reader will discover more minute resemblances to the very dialogue of Beaumont and Fletcher on perusing p. 209, and pp. 324, 325. I do Dryden no injury in ascribing a decided superiority to the more ancient drama

tists.

as that upon which the conclusion of the piece necessarily depends. The liberation of Cleomenes from his Egyptian bondage is doubtless the consummation concerning which the poet meant that we should be anxious; but this event might be brought about in so many different ways, and, if accomplished, brings Cleomenes so little nearer to the restoration of Spartan liberty, that it is perhaps insufficient to excite that strong, concentrated, and vivid interest, which the plot of a drama ought properly to inspire. The mind is distracted among the various possibilities by which the desired catastrophe might be accomplished; and feels a consciousness, that even were Cleomenes dismissed with full sails from the port of Alexandria, it would be rather the beginning than the winding up of his history. For these reasons, the plot seems more deficient in interest than might have been expected, from the spirited delineation of the principal character.

It appears that Dryden was unable, from illness, to put the 'finishing strokes to "Cleomenes." That task he committed to Southerne, now his intimate friend, and who, as may be easily imagined, felt himself much honoured by the task imposed upon him. The half of the fifth act was that upon which Southerne exercised this power of revisal and finishing; for that it amounted to no more, will, I think, be obvious to any who takes the trouble to compare that act with those which precede it. The rabblescene, introduced, as the poet himself tells us, to gratify the more barbarous part of his audience, is indeed deplorably bad.

The play, when presented to the theatre, met with unexpected opposition from the government, then directed by Queen Mary, in

This fact is ascertained by the following passage in the Dedication of Southerne's play, called the "Wife's Excuse," to the Honourable Thomas Wharton.

"These, sir, are capital objections against me; but they hit very few faults, nor have they mortified me into a despair of pleasing the more reasonable part of mankind. If Mr Dryden's judgment goes for any thing, I have it on my side; for, speaking of this play, he has publicly said, "the town was kind to Sir Anthony Love; I needed them only to be just to this ;" and to prove there was more than friendship in his opinion, upon the credit of this play with him, falling sick last summer, he bequeathed to my care the half of the last act of his tragedy of "Cleomenes;" which, when it comes into the world, you will find to be so considerable a trust, that all the town will pardon me for defending this play, that preferred me to it. If modesty be sometimes a weakness, what I say can hardly be a crime: in a fair English trial, both parties are allowed to be heard; and, without this vanity of mentioning Mr Dryden, I had lost the best evidence of my cause."

I cannot but remark a material difference between this quotation, as here quoted from the 8vo edition of Southerne's Plays, 1774, and as quoted by Mr Malone, who reads "the fifth act," instead of "the half of the fifth

act."

Besides, he

the absence of her husband. This was not very surprising, considering the subject of the play, and Dryden's well-known principles. The history of an exiled monarch, soliciting, in the court of an ally, aid to relieve his country from a foreign yoke, and to restore him to the throne of his fathers, with the account of a popular insurrection undertaken for the same purposes, were delicate themes during the reign of William III.; at least, when the pen of Dryden was to be employed in them, whose well-known skill at adapting an ancient story to a modern moral had so often been exercised in the cause of the house of Stuart. had already given offence by his prologue to the "Prophetess," when revived, which contains some familiar metaphorical sneers, as Cibber calls them, at the Irish war, the female regency, and even the Revolution itself. This prologue had been forbidden; and a similar exertion of authority was deemed fit in the case of "Cleomenes." Accordingly, before the inoffensive nature of the piece could be explained, the court took alarm at the subject in the abstract, and the performance of the piece was prohibited by the Chamberlain. * It appears, the exertions of Lord Rochester, the maternal uncle of Queen Mary, and of his family, had been sufficiently powerful to guarantee the harmless nature of the play, and to procure a recal of the mandate, by which the acting of the piece, and the consequent profits of the author, had been for some time suspended.

When the play was performed, our author had the satisfaction to see the first character admirably represented by the well-known Mrs Barry, to whom he has paid, in the preface, the splendid compliment of saying, "that she had gained by her performance a reputation beyond any woman he had ever seen on the theatre.Ӡ

* Motteux, in the "Gentleman's Journal," has announced the prohibition of Cleomenes, and its removal, in a remarkable passage quoted by Mr Ma

lone.

"I was in hopes to have given you in this letter an account of the acting of Dryden's "Cleomenes:" it was to have appeared upon the stage on Saturday last, and you need not doubt but that the town was big with the expectation of the performance; but orders came from her Majesty to hinder its being acted; so that none can tell when it shall be played."

"I told you in my last," says the same writer in the following month, "that none could tell when Mr Dryden's "Cleomenes" would appear. Since that time, the innocence and merit of the play have raised it several eminent advocates, who have prevailed to have it acted; and you need not doubt but it has been with great applause."

+ Cibber has thus described Mrs Barry at the time when she was honoured by this high compliment from Dryden :

"Mrs Barry was then (in 1690) in possession of almost all the chief parts in tragedy: With what skill she gave life to them, you may judge from the

If this expression, as Cibber seems to think, be a little over-stretched, it at least serves to prove to us, that the play was well recei

words of Dryden in his preface to "Cleomenes." I perfectly remember her acting that part; and, however unnecessary it may seem to give my judgement after Dryden's, I cannot help saying, I do not only close with his opinion, but will venture to add, that though Dryden has been dead these thirtyeight years, the same compliment to this hour may be due to her excellence. And though she was then not a little past her youth, she was not till that time fully arrived to her maturity of power and judgment. From whence I would observe, that the short life of beauty is not long enough to form a complete actress. In men, the delicacy of person is not so absolutely necessary, nor the decline of it so soon taken notice of. The fame Mrs Barry arrived at, is a particular proof of the difficulty there is in judging with certainty from their first trials, whether young people will ever make any great figure in a theatre. There was, it seems, so little hope of Mrs Barry at her first setting out, that she was at the end of the first year discharged the company, among others that were thought to be a useless expence to it. I take it for granted, that the objection to Mrs Barry at that time must have been a defective ear, or some unskilful dissonance in her manner of pronouncing. But where there is a proper voice and person, with the addition of a good understanding, experience tells us, that such defect is not always invincible; of which not only Mrs Barry, but the late Mrs Oldfield, are eminent instances. Mrs Barry, in characters of greatness, had a presence of elevated dignity; her mien and motion superb, and gracefully majestic; her voice full, clear, and strong, so that no violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting melody and softness. In the art of exciting pity, she had a power beyond all the actresses I have yet seen, or what your imagination can conceive. Of the former of these two great excellencies, she gave the most delightful proofs in almost all the heroic plays of Dryden and Lee; and of the latter, in the softer passions of Otway's Monimia and Belvidera. In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony; and it was this particular excellence for which Dryden made her the above-recited compliment upon her acting Cassandra in his "Cleomenes." But here I am apt to think his partiality for that character may have tempted his judgment to let it pass for her master-piece, when he could not but know there are several other characters in which her action might have given her a fairer pretence to the praise he has bestowed upon her for Cassandra: for in no part of that is there the least ground for compassion, as in Monimia; nor equal cause for admiration, as in the nobler love of Cleopatra, or the tempestuous jealousy of Roxana. 'Twas in these lights I thought Mrs Barry shone with a much brighter excellence than in Cassandra. She was the first person whose merit was distinguished by the indulgence of having an annual benefit-play, which was granted to her alone, if I mistake not, first in King James's time; and which became not common to others, till the division of this company after the death of King William's Queen Mary. This great actress died of a fever towards the latter end of Queen Anne; the year I have forgot, but perhaps you will recollect it by an expression that fell from her in blank verse, in her last hours, when she was delirious, viz.

Ha, ha! and so they make us lords by dozens !"

ved; for, otherwise, the intercourse of civility between the author and performers is generally very slender.

Cleomenes was acted and published in 1692.

"And yet (says Antony Aston, in his curious Supplement to Cibber's work,') this fine creature was not handsome, her mouth opening most on the right side, which she strove to draw t'other way, and at times composing her face, as if sitting to have her picture drawn. Mrs Barry was middle-sized, and had darkish hair, light eyes, dark eyebrows, and was indifferently plump. She had a manner of drawing out her words, which became her, but not Mrs Bradshaw and Mrs Porter, her successors. Neither she, nor any of the actresses of those times, had any tone in their speech, so much lately in use. In tragedy she was solemn and august; in free comedy, alert, easy, and genteel; pleasant in her face and action; filling the stage with variety of gesture. She was woman to Lady Shelton, of Norfolk, (my godmother,) when Lord Rochester took her on the stage, where for some time they could make nothing of her. She could neither sing nor dance, no not in a countrydance."-MALONE, Vol. III. p. 227.