A SECOND INSPECTION OF THE NEW TRAGEDY.

THEY who have not yet seen YOUNG in Rienzi will do well to repair that piece of neglect. It is not his most admirable per- formance ; but yet it :is one which a lover of the stage, in these declining days, may reasonably blame himself for having omitted to see. t'The contemplation of it will smooth the passage of three hours of rugged life, and send the spectator home to bed in a sober but not unhappy mood. There is andoubtedly a moving power in the play ; for the heart—the best critic—confesses it ; but how much of the merit was to be ascribed to the actor and how much to the authoress, was, till the publication of the work, not easy to be ascertained. The perusal of it inclines us to think that the sarcasm and pathos, the energy and eloquence, reside chiefly, if not altogether, in the actor. With the impression made by the latter on our mind, operating in its favour, we •set down Rienzi as a much more powerful production than Foseari ; but though a closer comparison leaves the preponderance still in favour of the first, it has vety greatly diminished, in our eyes, the difference between them.

We cannot better illustrate the style of Mr. YOUNG'S per- formance, in the earlier stages of the drama, than by reminding the reader of those passages in his lago and Pierre, which manifest a blunt, unsparing, sarcastic, and seemingly off-hand speech and manner—partly, it may be supposed, native, and partly assumed to cover deep designs, and, in the first instance, a treacherous purpose. It is precisely the bearing of a man shrewd enough to understand that one who vents so much gall in words, will be thought to retain none in his heart ; and that in so frank and rash a talker nobody will suspect a dangerous conspirator. The cha- racter is well described by one whom SHAHSPEARE has drawn a superlative villain; but villains often utter general truths, and lie only, like the speaker in question, in the particular application of them.

—" He cannot flatter, he !— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth : An they will take it, so ; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness Harbour more craft, and more corrupter ends, Than twenty silly ducking observants, That stretch their duties nicely."

The " bitter railer" is well done in the opening scenes : every sarcasm is driven home, and an intensely caustic expression given to that which in itself has often no particular force. When in the midst of their dark debate Rienzi steals silently upon the Colonna family and their friends, and interrupts the old chief just as he happens to name his two mortal enemies, the Ursini, with the brief recommendation—" Despatch them at a stroke—they're thy foes,"—the sudden and unceremonious utterance of what everybody wished but nobody expressed, falls with something like the effect of a cannon-ball bouncing in upon a party conversing at their ease beyond the supposed range of the enemy's shot. Rienzi is re- minded of a brother, who had fallen in one of the midnight brawls of the ruling nobles, and his mock humility and concentrated bit- terness are worthy of Shylock.

—Your privilege, Your feudal privilege ! Ye slay our brethren, And we—kiss the sword*.

The same intense but smothered indignation burns under a simi- lar assumption of indifference when he replies to the citizen's query as to what his "patrons, the proud Colonna," will say to the expected elevation of Martin Ursini to the Senatorship :- My patrons !—Oh, they'll fight ! they'll fight !—they'll pour

Their men-at-arms into our streets, and wage

Fierce battle ; burn and plunder' spoil and slay

Guilty or innocent, or friend or foe : Their nature, sirs, their noble nature.

Pao. Well.

And we ? what is our fate, sir prophet ?

Rie. We !

Whichever wheel turn round, we shall be crushed Between the mill-stones. That's our destiny,— The destiny we earn.

The actor does not give to passages of this nature the air of a cutting innuendo, or enforce their bitterness with the Satanic smile which KEAN is apt to assume. YOUNG'S sarcasm is no Saracen's blade, keen even to the dividing of a hair ; but may more aptly be likened to a tomahawk, that demolishes by the sheer downright emphasis of its delivery. It is a cold, stern, and unequivocal tone, which excludes the very idea of banter, and allows not the person addressed the remotest ground for supposing the speaker not in earnest.

The dark intimation to Colonna, that he might yet "be friends" with the chief, whom he had just termed—" a knavish ruffian ;" and the grave advice to "mend his phrase" and "bespeak that ruffian fair," sounded at once ominous and threatening on the ear.

Rie. Ay; A day will come, when I shall see ye joined In a close league. Col. Joined! by what tie ?

Rie. By hatred— By danger— This was uttered with an energy of emphasis, which none but YOUNG could have given it. One of the party holds in his hand a copy of the scroll which Rienzi had caused to be affixed "on churches, at street corners, in the markets," summoning the citizens to meet, in his own name, at midnight,—upon the capitol,—for freedom ; and conceiving it Ploraant of Voice,

* Fair Sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last : You spurned me such a day— .

—and for these courtesies

I'll lead you thus much monies."

an excellent jest, demands of the future tribune, when he purposes to go forth and " head his rebel band."

Rie. (reading] " At midnight—" Well, I come here to while away the time Till that dread hour— The frank assurance of the actor's manner is here inimitable— calculated to set such as were not in his secret a laughing at so well-acted an earnestness, and make those that were, absolutely stare at the barefaced impudence of the avowal. But the truth is, in the very naked openness of his speech consists the impenetra- bility of the disguise. The tone is admirably well preserved throughout. --I counsel ye, my lords,

Seize me, and crush this great rebellion ; me, Cola Rienzi, honest Cola ! Laugh ye ? An honest man hath played the rogue ere now. WITNESS TIIIS SCROLL.

Col. A scurvy jest ! Rie. A jest'

In the first two acts, Mr. YOUNG has a tolerable field for a dis- play of the qualities which make him the very prince of stage in- surgents ; and his railing, cutting. scornful, inflammatory invec- tives, bring to mind a whole line of characters made illustrious by his acting—llotspur, Cassius, Pierre, and other personages, whom we hope he will give us once again to see walking the stage, in the perfection of breathing life. But one or two strokes, aside, as it were— unpremeditated—by-the-bye, deserve to be particularly recorded. He is recounting the exploits of their feudal oppressors- - how on Monday

A noble gallant, one of the Ursi, stole,— Seizol is the courtlier plwase,—and wrung the neck Of Adriani's falcon—how, on Tuesday, Black John of Ursini, spurred his hot courser Right through a band of pious pilgrims, many, too, Are lamed for life !—Or, how, on Wednesday-

Cit. Stop-

Rie. I can go through the week ! !

We have dwelt more at length on the first two acts, because Mr. YOUNG has much more scope therein for discovering that peculiar vein, in which he never, in our memory, had a rival ; and because these two acts are vastly superior to the subsequent ones. We have only room left barely to notice three distinguished passages in the remainder of the performance. In the quarrel- scene with his son-in-law, the latter is provoked by one of Rienzi's taunts to a manual demonstration of hostility, to which the Tribune quietly responds- " Lay not thy hand upon thy sword, fair son—

Keep that brave for,thy comrades. I'll not fight thee."

The tone in which the last words were uttered seemed to say- " I have many other ways to die more befitting my character. I have no need to prove my courage on every saucy boy that wears a sword." They indicated a superiority too high to admit even of a feeling of contempt. We recollect nothing of the kind worthy of being compared with this, but a similar passage in the same actor's performance of Pierre, when he addresses Renault—who, at the word " coward" had begun fumbling at his weapon- -" Put up thy sword, old man ;

Thy hand shakes at it."

Of passages that rise above the elevation of mere republican fervour, there are not many ; but it would be unjust to the authoress, as well as to the actor, not to cite the following, in which the genius of both reaches its highest elevation. Rienzi has con- demned his old oppressor, Martin Ursini, convicted of having plundered a wreck—" an argosy"—to the cord and gibbet. The Lords in a body plead for the great robber. The Tribune of the people replies—

But this very day, a wife, One infant hanging at her breast, and two Scarce bigger, first-born twins of misery, Clinging to the poor rags that scarcely hid Her squalid form, grasped at my bridle rein, To beg her husband's life ; condemned to die For some vile petty theft, some paltry scudi : And whilst the fiery war-horse chafed and reared, Shaking his crest, and plunging to get free, There, midst the dangerous coil, unmoved, she stood, Pleading in piercing words, the very cry

Of nature ! And, when I at last said no—

For I said no to her—she flung herself And those poor innocent babes between the stones

And my hot Arab's hoofs. We saved them all—

Thank Heaven, we saved them all ! but I said no To that sad woman, midst her shrieks. Ye dare not Ask me merry now.

In the domestic scenes of Rienzi there was a fair proportion of paternal benevolence in the manner and the accents of Mr. YOUNG; but still his tenderness seemed not so native—so genuine—as his sternness ; and, in one or two instances, it was rather censurable, as being studied and over-done. But one passage was eminently beautiful, and reminded us of his own Hamlet's affectionate apos- trophe to his father—" My father !—methinks I see my father." Rienzi is playing the prophet in the hall of Colonna, and telling the chief that Angelo, his son, would "espouse the fairest maid in Rome—the fairest and the greatest," meaning Claudia, Rienzi's own daughter. Some one interposes with —"And as good as she is great, and innocent as fair ? Rienzi replies—

Even to the crowning of a poet's dream ; Gentle, and beautiful, and good.

All the father spoke in the tone and even the countenance of the actor: he seemed as one who for the moment was lost to sur- rounding objects, and had forgotten the thread of his discourse, absorbed in the contemplation a a beatific vision.