'POEMS A:IID )(IMOD?. 0 . 1r TII01/A LOTELL BEDDOES: * 111:E author of

"Death's Jest-book, or the Fool's Tragedy," t was .uadoubtedly possessed of great poetical spirit and power. He failed by directing his attention to art instead of nature, and art of a partial and peculiar if not an exploded school. To his eye, men for purposes of poetry were singular in intellect and strange in conduct; while life appeared as a tissue of extreme crimes or nn-

robable events, varied by supernatural apparitions, that had as

reference to s as his persons to human probability. This peculiarity of spectral may in part be attributed to a native 'bent of mind, but much of it was owing to his course of study. The bald but irregular dramatists of Elizabeth's time were to Bed.- .does instead of nature ; and the best proof of this is that he grew milder in his subjects as he advanced in years. His first produc- tion, "The Brides' Tragedy," published nearly thirty years ago, was founded upon the murder of a wife by her husband; and though the original subject belonged to the category of criminal .records rather than poetry, the author redeemed the story from anere.felony, by making the dramatic murderer jealous, as well as interested in getting another wife. His next two dramatic designs, BO far as can be judged from fragments, grew-wilder in their subject —extreme or-improbable as regards life, rather than life unfitted Tar poetry ; but they also improved in power, in loftiness both of thought and language, and in firm distinctness of delineation. In his last and most ambitious work, "Death's Jest-book," begun some quarter of a century ago, and revised and corrected in the in- terval, he reached the very extreme even of his. improbability. How close this imitation of the older poets extended, maybe shown by a trivial circumstance. The splendour of the independent .Th..thes of the Byzantine empire, and of Florence and Venice, ren- dered it a -popular title for a sovereign among the Elizabethan dramatists; and every ruler in the dramas of Beddoes is a Duke, sometimes without the appropriateness of his originals. But if Beddoes imitated the faults, and transplanted into another age the temporary fashions of the sixteenth century, he was able to reach the better qualities of his prototypes. He had their height and grasp of mind, their richness and boldness of invention ; he bad the power of a poet to sustain himself by force of thought and diction, amid scenes of strangeness passing into absurdity. :Above all, he had that majesty and sweep of tragic passion which presses onward to its object regardless of all mean hinderances or personal interests. There is an example of -this, and well con- trasted with the more worldly idea of the attendant, in the frag- ment called "The Second .Brother." Varini has pursued Orazio, his son-in-law, to ruin, by means of the profligate pleasures of the latter, and drives him from his palace in the midst of his fes- tivity.

" .Attend. My lord-

Trarin. What-are they, airrah ?

Attend. The palace-keys. There is a banquet in the inner room : Shall we remove the plate ? Varies. Leave it alone : Wine in the cups, the spicy meats uncovered, .And the round lamps each with a star of flame Upon their brink ; 'let winds begot on roses, And grey with incense, rustle through the silk

• And velvet curtains : then set all the windows, The doors and gates, wide open ; let the wolves, Foxes, and owls, and snakes, come in and feast ; Let the bats nestle in the golden bowls, The shaggy brutes stretch on the velvet couches, 'The serpent twine him o'er and o'er the harp's Delicate chords : to Night, and all its devils,

We do abandon this-accursed house. [Exeunt."

The following passage from the scene where the second brother, supposed dead, suddenly returns from long exile and suffering, to claim his dukedem,is hyperbolicalrand by. ncrmeans reasonable in. its maxims. but there is poetry in the images, and largeness as well as hyperbole in the thoughts.

"A Rom in the Ducal Palace.

• Monorail.° alone.

Marc. I have them all at last : swan-necked Obedience; And Power that strides across the muttering people, Like a tall bridge ; and War, the spear-mined dragon : Such are the potent spirits he commands,

• Who sits within the circle of a-crown ! -Sfethought that love began at icoman's eye : But thou, brit imitation of the sun, Kindlest the frosty mould around my heart-roots, And, breathing through the branches of my reins, itfakest each azure tendril of them blossom Deep, tingling pleasures, musically hinged, Dropping with starry sparks, goldenly honied, And smelling sweet with the delights of life. At length I ant Marcell°.

• Eater trim

Er. _Mighty Duke, Pernire's nobles .wait on-yen,loprotrer

• The homage of their coronets.

• Poems-by the late Thomas -Lovell Beddoes, Author of " Death's Jest-book, or ,t./r Fool's Tragedy." With a liamair. -Published b7 •Fickeriog. petattfrrfor`1100,-pstge 843. Ware. 1-shall-not see-them.

_Err. It was the ancient usage of the state, everyage.

Marc. Henceforth; be it-forgotten !

rl will not let the rabble's daily sight Be my look's playmate. Say unto them, Emil, 'Theireovereigns of foretime were utter men, Pates gods, that beat an highway in their thoughts Before my car ; idols of monarchy, Whose forme they might behold. Now I am come, Be it enough that they are taught my name, Permitted to adore- it, swear and pray In it and to it : for the rest, I wrap

The pillared caverns of my palace round me,

Like to a cloud, and rule invisibly On the god-shouldering summit of mankind.

Dismiss them so.

'Tie dangerous—

Mare. Begone!

Each minute of man's safety he does walk A bridge, no thicker than his frozen breath, O'er a precipitous and craggy danger :Yawning to death ! [Exit Ezra. A perilous sea it is, 'Twist this and yore's throne, whose tumultuous waves

Are heaped, contending. ghosts! There is no passing,

But by those slippery, distant stepping-stones, Which frozen Odin trod, and Mehemet, With victories harnessed to his crescent sledge, And building waves of blood upon the shallows, O'erpassed triumphant : first a pile of thrones And broken nations, then the knees of men, From whence, to catch the lowest root of heaven, We must embrace the winged waist ef fame, Or nest within opinion's palmy top 'Till it has mixed its leaves with Atlas' hair, Quicker to-grow than were the men of Cadmus."

The Memoir of Beddoes, prefixed to this volume of his Remaias, explains how a man with his powers, and who practised poetry for thirty years, was so little known in his lifetime, and has left so little behind him to preserve his name. Beddoes had a poetical faculty; he had scholarship, he had leisure, he had a liking for the exercise of his art, and he was a man who improved by age ; bat he had an income sufficient for his desires, and he had no stimulus of accident or position to force him to. finish what he conceived. Idle his life could hardly be called, but it was passed in a 'fruitless industry. In 1821, while-a freshman at Oxford and yet-in his teens, he published The Improviecttore, a juvenile collection of poems ; in 1822, while still a minor, "The Brides' Tragedy" appeared ; exhi- biting a considerable advance upon the former publication, though hardly giving token of the powers he subsequently attained. Hence- forth his public life was a blank; hisappearazices in print were few and far between, and- only with trivial pieces, published in periodi- cals, by his 'friends rather than himself. If he was-not haunted by a reproachful sense of wasted powers, his life probably passed happily enough. He studied physic at several German mei- versifies, and took his degree ; but, though he wrote medical essays, he never made any systematic attempts at publication or practice. He was also continually -writing poetry ; but -the only perfected work he left behind him wheu he died was "Death's Jest-book "; and that was hardly finished. After taking his degree at Oxford, he lived mostly on the Continent; paying only occasional visits to this country, but 'corresponding 'freely with his friends, chiefly on literary affairs. Ile was born in NOS ; being the eldest son of Davy's early friend Dr. Thomas Beddow of Clifton, and of Anna, sister of -Maria Edgeworth. He lost his father in 1809, and was placed by his guardian, Sir Davies Gilbert, the well-known President of the -Royal Society, first at the Bath Grammar School, and afterwards at the Charterhonse ; whence he was transferred to Pembroke College, Oxford. He died in January 1849.

The Memoir in this volume has been composed by the friend who undertook the publication of "Death's Jest-book" : stimu- lated by the attention that dramatic poem excited, he has made a selection from the unpublished poems of his friend, and reprinted "The Brides' Tragedy." In the execution of-his task he .has fallen into the almost unavoidable -error of overdoing. The life, . so un- eventful that a few pages would suffice to contain the whole ca- reer, has been expanded to a considerable length by letters, which deal with topics of too private a kind, or pass too much into lite- rary discussion, to have interest, unless in the case-of aanore- vrell- known person. The editor has committed the same error in his selections. The reprint of "The Brides' Tragedy" was justifiable ; -the publication of the two unfinished dramas was desirable ; but the minor pieces and 'fragments, especially the latter, should have bean vigorously weeded. The minor pieces are inferior to the dramas; and the fragments only exhibit the same mind and-style that are shown better and more completely in the tragedies. In the biography, 'Mr. Bevan the barrister, who was "fag" to Beddoes at the Charterhouse, has contributed some reminiscences of that period, which are more characteristic than complimeatary, but possess a true biographical interest. There are also sound re- marks of a critical kind in the correspondence, though mixed up with many small and some self-conceited things. The following olbservations on dramatic accessories, especially the mask, is an ex- ample of the better sort.

"Many things are quite absurd, and destructive of all poetry,. in =range' -wants which appear not of the slightest consequence ; I am convinced that -playbills, for instance, are very pernicious : one should never know the actors' names and private circumstances ; the spectators would then be com- pelled to identify them with their dramatic characters, the interest would be much purer and undivided, the illusion carried as far as it can and ought

1-to w can people enter deeply into the spirit of a tragedy, for

instance, (in- comedy it is a matter of less consequence,) whose question , is, How _do you likelican tonight ? Is not Claremont delightful in Rosen- liranz ? &c. Richard, and Rosenkranz, are here obliged to play -Claremont and Kean, instead of the reverse. The actor, on the other hand, deprived at his private name and existence, must feel more convinced of the , reality of his five-act life, would be liberated from the shackles of timidity and the temptations of individual vanity, would care less about his auditors, ' and he unable to try and please the kidica—as Mr. — with the handsome ; ,&c.—wink to his friends in the pit, &c. &c. To whet curiosity and , occasion astonishment, is not the leak important object of the dramatist; the actors might have learned from Scott, that anonymous mysteriousnese As one of the most effective arts for this purpose. A distant idea of the use ' of this concealment probably caused the custom, observed in the announce- mentef a new play,—principal characters by Messrs. Doe and Roe. But the :names of the people in the drama ought to be printed with the necessary key, (father, son, &c.) not those of the gentleman who lodges at the pastrycook's, wears the threadbare coat, &e. The Greeks (from whom we can learn much, if we understand their motives) were in possession of this secret : and this is the real meaning of their masks, which have so much bothered the critics ; these were doubly useful,—they deceived to a certain degree, not only the spectator, but also the actor, with the semblance of an heroic and unknown person, and prevented the annoying familiarity of the people on the stage. Of course I do not wish to see their sort of masks on our stage (our passionate drama renders them impossible, though it might be an interesting experiment to try them once in an adaptation of Agamemnon, the Bacchm, Antigone, or Electra, to conclude with the satyric drama, the Cyclops) : it is only to be lamented that we have no other means of com- pletely disguising our actors, and making Richard, Hamlet, Macbeth, as ab- solutely distinct and independent individuals as CEdipus and Orestes must have been. The Athenians would, I am sure, have pelted their fellow citizen and neighbour, as the pathetic, hobbling, ulcerous Philoctetes, off the stage with onions : only a conviction of his reality could have reconciled their frivolous imaginations with him, or subdued them to compassion ; and Agamemnon or Hercules unmasked would have been saluted- with 'their 'nicknames from all sides. Othello's colour is a sort of mask."