writer aspires not, excepting in a scene or two translated from Shakspeare, above a tame and insipid mediocrity. The total failure indeed of Monti, when employed upon the annals of his country, and the flatness of the tragedies written on subjects of the same nature, by Giovanni Pindemonte, and Count Pepoli, might make us tremble for our theory, could we not appeal to a splendid confirmation of it in the works of Foscolo and Pellico, now before us. Before we arrive at them, however, it is just to notice the Arminio, of Ippolito Pindemonte, which is in a much more elevated tone than the tragedies of his brother. The choral songs of the bards display some pleasing poetry, but perhaps, too much in the style of Metastasio for the rough genius of the Northern Foresters. The whole, indeed, is wanting in the fierce energy and gloomy sublimity which should have characterized a poem, the scene of which is laid among the ancient Germans all the characters converse with the refined notions of Greece and Rome upon liberty and tyranny, not with the haughty independence of uncivilized life; and Arminius, himself, is degraded into the tool of a subtle and somewhat Machiavellian fraud.

The author of the Conte di Carmagnola, Alessandro Manzoni, in his preface, boldly declares war against the Unities. To ourselves, chartered libertines,' as we consider ourselves on the authority of Shakspeare's example and Johnson's argument, little confirmation will be gained from this proselyte to our tramontane notions of dramatic liberty; we fear, however, that the Italians will require a more splendid violation of their old established laws, before they are led to abandon them. Carmagnola wants poetry; the parting scene between the unhappy Count and his family, is indeed affecting, but with this praise and that of occasional simple and manly eloquence the drama itself might be dismissed. We cannot, however, refrain from making known to our readers the most noble piece of Italian lyric poetry which the present day has produced, and which occurs as a chorus at the end of the second act of his drama; and we confess our hopes that the author will prefer, in future, gratifying us with splendid odes, rather than offending us by feeble tragedy.

Hark! to the right the trumpet knelleth!

Hark! to the left a knell replying!

On either side the earth repelleth

The trampling tread of steed and man.

Lo here, in air a banner flying,
There another broadly glancing-
Here a banded troop advancing,
Another meets it, van to van.

The

space between hath disappeared,

Now they're clashing, brand with brand,

F 4

Breasts

Breasts with deadly wounds are scarred,
Blood bursts, more fast their blows they ply;
Who are they? the lovely land

What new stranger wasteth now?
Who hath made the noble vow,
His native soil to free or die?
One their language, as their race
Of one country; strangers call
Each one a brother, every face
Speaks them of a family;

This earth the common nurse of all-
This earth, all kneaded now with blood,
Which nature in its solitude

Girt from the world with Alps and sea.
Ah! who to slay his brother first
Uprear'd the sacrilegious brand?
Oh horror! who the cause accurst
Of this thrice cursed butchery?
They know not-come the hireling band
Of a hireling captain, they,
Careless to be slain or slay,

With him they fight, and ask not why.
Ah woe! these fools in conflict wild,
Or wives or mothers have they not?
Why hastes not each her spouse, her child,
From that ignoble field to rend?
The aged, who e'en now devote
To the dark grave each holy thought,
Why speed they not that maddening route
With counsel wise in peace to blend?

As sits the countryman before
His quiet dwelling's gate at ease;
Watching the storms, aloof that pour

On fields his ploughshare hath not turn'd;
So hear ye each, afar that sees,

Secure, yon armed cohorts dread,
Recount the thousands of the dead,

And the wild woes of cities burn'd.

There from their mother's lips suspense,
Behold the sons, intent on learning
By names of scorn to know, whom thence
Ere long they shall go forth to slay ;
Here dames at eve all brightly burning
With rings and collars jewel'd pride,
Which from the vanquish'd's desolate bride,
Husband or lover rent away.

Ah woe! ah woe! ah woe! with slain
The loaded earth is covered up!

And

And all is blood yon spacious plain,

More loud the shouts, more wild the strife;
But in yon failing bands a troop

Is wavering now, and now it breaketh ;
And, victory hopeless, now awaketh
In vulgar souls the love of life.
As in the air the scattering grain
From the broad fan, is whirl'd abroad,
So all about the ample plain

The conquered warriors rout is spread,
But sudden on the fugitives road
Fierce squadrons unforeseen appear,
And on their flank, more near, more near,
Is heard the horseman's thundering tread.
Trembling before their foes they lie,
The prisoners' yielded arms are heaped,
The conqueror drowns with clamorous cry
The sound the lowly dying makes;
The courier, to his saddle leaped,
Takes, folds his billet, and away;
He flogs, he spurs, devours the way;
Each city at the rumour wakes.

Why all the trodden road along

Run ye from forth your fields, your homes?
Each asks his neighbour in the throng,
Anxious what joyous news hath he;
Hapless! ye know from whence he comes,
And hope ye words of joyful strain ?
Brothers by brothers have been slain,
This dreadful news I give to thee.
I hear around the festive cries,
The adorned temples ring with song,
From homicidal hearts arise

Thanksgiving hymns abhorr'd of God,
The while the stranger, from among
The Alps high circle stoops his sight,
Beholds, and counts with fierce delight,

The brave that bite the bloody sod.
Break off the triumph and the feasting!
Speed, speed and fill your ranks anew,
Be each unto his banner hasting,

The Stranger is come down-is here-
Ah conquerors! ye are weak and few!
Therefore he comes to battle dight,
And waits you in yon field of fight,
Because your brother perish'd there.
Oh for thy children too confin'd!
Thy sons in peace thou can'st not feed,

Doom d

Doom'd land! to strangers now resign'd,
Such judgment hath begun on thee.
A foe, by thee unharm'd indeed,
Sits at thy board, and mocks thy toils,
Divides thy frantic people's spoils,

And holds thy sword of sovereignty.
Frantic he too! Oh never! no,
Was nation blest by blood and wrong;
The conquered feel not all the woe;
Still turns to tears the guilty's joy :
Though not his haughty way along
Th' eternal vengeance sweeps and breaks,
It follows, watches still, and wakes,
At his last moment, to destroy.
Stamped in One image at our birth,
Made in the likeness all of One;
Ever, at every part of earth

Where breath of life we may inherit,
Be brethren all! Our unison
Accurst be he to strife who turns,

Accurst who mocketh him that mourns,

Or saddeneth one immortal spirit!'

We now arrive at the most recent, and, we are inclined to say, the most successful attempts to found Italian Tragedy upon Italian subjects, the Ricciarda of Foscolo, and the Francesca da Rimini of Pellico; to which we appeal as a perfect justification of our opinions. Signor Foscolo's dramatic career was opened by the tragedy of Thyeste,' of which Alfieri is reported to have said, if the author be only nineteen he will surpass me.' A tragedy written at that age might naturally expect the indulgence of criticism, and Thyeste, in fact, is the work of a youth, but still that of a young poet. Considerable skill shewn in the management of a repulsive subject, great force and vehemence in the expression of passion, an attempt to relieve the general gloom of the piece by the excitement of a milder interest, that of the maternal affection of Erope, which is foreign indeed to the subject, but for which we are nevertheless grateful, and an animating spirit of enthusiasm, distinguish Thyeste from its less revolting, but tame and feeble rivals. We believe that the next dramatic composition of Foscolo was the Ajace, which fell under the interdict of the reigning powers in Italy; nor can we wonder at this, for Moreau was figured under the character of Ajax, and Buonaparte under that of Agamemnon. We conceive that the following important objection may be made in general to the choice of subjects for the Grecian stage: besides the difficulty of divesting them of their mythological spirit, which we can scarcely believe

it possible to retain, it must be recollected that we address either a learned or an unlearned reader. It is obvious, that, unless from the sonorousness of the names, we can derive no influence over the latter; he has no associations with the heroes of antiquity; Orestes and Iphigenia are no more to him than two characters drawn from the most barbarous annals. But the learned reader is invariably tempted to exercise a sort of rigid jealousy towards this rival, as it were, of his favourite writers; he does not, therefore, consider so much whether the poetry be true to nature, as whether it be in the precise form which the subject has been accustomed to wear; he pauses, before he will shudder or weep, to recollect whether that terror or those tears were wont to be excited by the characters before him; and this very state of mind, this perpetual reference to a pre-established model, chills the current of feeling, and checks every transport. Our imagination is not full of those images only which the poet suggests, but of others with which they are associated; we are comparing while we ought to be feeling; we are perhaps offended, even by a splendid passage, because it deviates from our old opinions, formed upon the earlier writers; even originality forfeits its claim upon our attention by interfering with favourite associations. But if this be the case with all poetry formed on the Grecian Drama, how much more so must it be, when a new distraction is forced upon us; when we have to debate within ourselves, not whether the poet's Ajax be nobly conceived, and not abhorrent from the spirit of Sophocles, but whether he is really like Moreau or not;-when we are called away from the heroic Agamemnon to admire the poet's ingenuity in veiling his modern Emperor in the robes of the ancient King; when we have to watch oblique hint, and carefully gather distant allusion, when we have to doubt and question, not whether such or such a passage be beautiful, but whether it contain any political meaning? We should not have been so diffuse on this subject, had we not known that this is not the only offence against our opinions contained in the Italian Theatre. We have before us a tragedy, (in which we find some fine declamation,) named Nabucco, where the Emperor of the French and his Empress appear under the titles of that unfortunate despot of Assyria, and his Queen. We should, however, in justice to Signor Foscolo, add that we have seen some lines of his Ajace, spoken by Tecmessa, more in the true character of Greek dramatic poetry, than any perhaps with which we are acquainted in modern language.

The fable of the Ricciarda, dreadful as it is, is, we believe, founded on history; it treats on the more than Theban hatred of Guelfo, Prince of Salerno, towards his half-brother, Averardo,

whom