BOOKS.

BOTH\VELL.t MR. SWINBURNE'S dramatic fire shows perhaps at its best in passages of this tragedy, but the tragedy itself is not worthy of its finest portions. It is too long ; and very considerable portions of it drag heavily upon the reader. The subject is one which needs swift movement, and the movement is not swift. Mary Stuart's character itself, whether an accurate historic study or not, is very finely drawn, but even it is studied at too great length, and in parts the diffuseness of her passion for Bothwell becomes utterly wearisome. The pictures of Darnley and of John Knox are per- haps the only things in the play which are perfect of their kind. Though the whole interest of the play turns upon Bothwell, the picture of Bothwell himself is by no means a striking one. Doubt- less, it is true enough, so far as it goes. The fierce, bloody, and • The harvest home.

t Bothwell: a Tragedy. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto and Winins brutal soldier, who has so passionate a love of power and so little state-craft, whose idea of strength is violence, who finds it hard even to pretend to love the Queen whose sceptre he longs to wield, who sacrifices what of heart he has to his ambition when he divorces a wife whom he to some extent loves for the sake of marrying the Queen, and whose genuine admiration for Mary Stuart's daunt- lessness on the field of battle extorts from him the only really lover-like speeches he ever makes, is no doubt not only a strongly outlined, but a very real drawing ; yet there is a certain want of variety of treatment and wealth of resource in the devices by which. Mr. Swinburne presents Bothwell to us. Surely it was a mistake to give us not a single scene between Bothwell and his divorced wife, Lady Jane Gordon, on the subject of the cruel course he had taken in making her the instrument of rending the bonds between them. When so much space is spared,—far too much, we think, —to the scenes in which the policy of the different Scotch factions is debated, there might surely have been one to illustrate on a new side of his character the nature of the coarse soldier on whom the passion of the Queen was fixed, and only the more eagerly fixed that it was obvious that he slighted her love, though he coveted her throne. The monotony of this huge drama required all the legitimate devices which a poet of Mr. Swinburne's capacity could. employ for giving something of moral space, of human breadth, to its otherwise dark and almost savage interest. Mr. Swinburne has attempted this, though inade- quately, in the act called ' Jane Gordon,' by introducing a scene in which the divorced wife of Bothwell takes farewell of him and of the Queen with a somewhat exaggerated expression of sub- missiveness to both. But the scene is not an effective one, though the intention to bring out, by contrast with that meek, pale, self- devotedness, Mary Stuart's selfish and imperial passion, is gained. What we needed was rather that the poet should have given a touch of human depth to the singularly cold and violent ambition of Bothwell, something that should show what there was in him (beyond masterfulness) to take women ; and a great dramatist would,. we think, have availed himself of the affection which Bothwell crushed for the sake of his ambition, to exhibit this. Mr. Swinburne has not thought well to do so. Perhaps he pre- ferred to leave Bothwell's character unrelieved by any more human trait, in the nakedness of its gross ambition, in order to signalise even more sharply the complete absence of nobler elements in the Queen's passion. Yet as he so clearly gives us to understand that Jane Gordon's feeling for her husband was one of devotion even more intense, because far more self-forgetful and permanent, than the Queen's, he has the less excuse for not giving us some glimpse of the qualities which had secured that love, the rather as it is pretty clearly hinted to us that Bothwell himself loved his first wife as he could not love the Queen. There is something so dreary in the whole tragedy, so utterly unrelieved by nobleness,—if we except, at least, first the character of Knox, who appears not as an actor in the plot, but solely as preacher and prophet, and next, though these latter exceptions are of a cold and ambiguous kind, the disinterestedness of the statesman painted in Murray, and of the personal loyalty displayed by Lord Herries,—that we seem to need the exhibition of anything that is not wholly dark and violent in the nature of the great ruffian who furnishes the stock on which Mary Stuart's more winning forms of even colder passion, and more dignified resolves of an even crueler vindictiveness, are grafted. Mr. Swinburne may have thought that to diminish in any degree the effect of the moral savagery underlying the wholly superficial grace and refinement of Mary's fascinations, would be to spoil what was unique in the play. If eo, we cannot agree with him. The character of all such effects is brought out as much by shading as by concentration. Aud to have painted Bothwell himself as susceptible of a higher spring of natural affection than Mary, would have been to add a new touch to the striking portrait of the graceful assassin, the delicate adulteress, the velvet-handed fury.

However much readers may grumble at the somewhat tedious scenes in which Melville, Maitland, Morton, Murray, and the rest of them discuss affairs of State, and at the rather diffuse and wearisome messages of passion which the Queen sends to Bothwell by her page, no one will deny that, in the main, Mr. Swiuburne's portrait of Mary Stuart, both as Queen and as woman, is consistently conceived and grandly painted. He passes over altogether the years during which she had made her half-brother Murray her chief counsellor, and had sup- ported his policy with statesmanlike sagacity and firmness. These years make the strange problem of her reign still more com- plex, but they do not altogether suit the view which Mr. Swin- burue takes of her rash, violent, and insane policy, and it was as well, therefore, for the dramatist to leave them wholly out of sight. He wanted to paint a queen superficially distinguished by many royal qualities, of which complete dauntlessness was the most royal, and not destitute of astuteness and state-craft where her own personal desires and passions did not interfere with her duties as a monarch, but utterly faithless, wholly bent on making her public duties subservient to her private passions, and as passionate,'fierce, and loveless in her heart as the most brutal soldier among the faction-leaders of Scotland. Her passion for Darnley turns into cold hatred as soon as she perceives his utter weakness of character, and his inferiority in both courage and capacity to herself, and she lends herself to the treachery by which he is lured on to his death without either hesitation before- hand, or regret, much less remorse, afterwards. Bothwell seems to her as dauntless and even bolder of conception than herself ; and his real indifference to her, except as the prize of his ambition, rather fans the flame of her passion. But even for Bothwell, her passion, violent as it is, is not love. No sooner is she finally separated from him, than she appears to forget him, and to plunge eagerly into new intrigues for influence and vengeance, in which she is quite willing to lean on new favourites. Her thirst for revenge is even greater than her thirst for power, and when, in the last scene of the play, she leaves Scotland for England, her one ruling desire is to return with power to bathe the land in the blood of its unruly people. There is a vein of superstition in her character, but it is not painted very strongly. Of the ideal monarch's sympathy with people and country, so strong in the Tudors, so deficient in the Stuarts, there is in her not a trace. " L'Etat c'est moi," in an even narrower sense than that in which Louis XIV. used the expression, is the secret principle to which she is represented as conforming her actions. The State existed for her sake, not she for the State's. Her kingdom was nothing to her, if it could not procure her a fuller enjoyment of her own will and a fuller satisfaction of her own pas- sions than if she had been a private woman ; and the surprise and rage created in her by finding that her position imposed strict limits on her inclinations, instead of giving her will and pleasure a wider range, are the key-notes of a good deal of this play. But first and foremost, the physique in Mary is depicted as that of the soldier who takes delight in strife and danger and blood, and this Mr. Swinburne has painted very finely, and with reiterated strokes. Here is her own picture of her own delight in the chase and the battle-field :- "Queen. By this hand,

I would when we must 'light from horse we might Take wing instead, and so what time we live Live ever at glad speed save when we sleep. It points and edges the dull steel of life To feel the blood and brain in us renew By help of that life lifting us, and speed

That being not ours is mixed with us and serves.

I would hold counsel and wage war and reign Not in walled chambers nor close pens of state, But or in saddle or at sea, my steed As a sea-wave beneath the wind and me, Or the sea serving as a bitted-steed That springs like air and fire. Time comes, they say, When we love rest, house-keeping sloth, and calms; To me I think it will not come alive.

Berries. Madam, I would change yet one word with you

Ere I go hence, or others take your ear.

Queen. So shall you, sir; yet is my heart too light,

And its live blood too merry from the chase, And all my life too full of the air of joy Whereon it mounts up falcon-like for prey And hovers at its wings' width ere it strike, To give wise words wise welcome."

And here, again, is a still grander passage on the same theme, after her escape from Loch Leven:- " Queen. Even such a night it was

I looked again for to deliver me, Remembering such a night that broke my bonds Two wild years past that brought me through to this ; The wind is loud beneath the mounting moon, And the stars merry. Noble friends, to horse ; When I shall feel my steed exult with me,

I will give thanks for each of your good deeds

To each man's several love. I know not yet That I stand here enfranchised ; for pure joy I have not laid it yet to heart ; methinks This is a lightning in my dreams to-night

That strikes and is not, and my flattered eyes

Must wake with dawn in bonds. Douglas, I pray If it be not but as a flash in sleep And no true light now breaking, tell me you, That were my prison's friend ; I will believe I am free as fire, free as the wind, the night, All glad fleet things of the airier element That take no hold on earth ; for even like these Seems now the fire in me that was my heart And is a song, a flame, a burning cloud

That moves before the sun at dawn, and fades

With fierce delight to drink his breath and die.

If ever hearts were stabbed with joy to death, This that cleaves mine should do it, and one sharp stroke Pierce through the thrilled and trembling core like steel And cut the roots of life. Nay, I am crazed, To stand and babble like one mad with wine, Stung to the heart and bitten to the brain With this great drink of freedom; 0, such wine As fills man full of heaven, and in his veins Becomes the blood of gods. I would fain feel That I were free a little, ere that sense Be put to use ; those walls are fallen for me, Those waters dry, those gaolers dead, and this The first night of my second reign, that here Begins its record. I will talk no more Nor waste my heart in words, nor laugh To set my free face toward the large-eyed sky Against the clear wind and the climbing moon, And take into mine eyes and to my breast The whole sweet night and all the stars of heaven But put to present work the heart and hand That here rise up a queen's. Bring me to horse ; We will take counsel first of speed, and then Take time for counsel."

Mr. Swinburne uses this high-swelling elasticity in Mary's blood to explain and enhance her cruel indifference to the sufferings of Darnley, whom she despises *for his cowardice and irresolution far more than she resents his disloyalty to her- self. There is not a passage in the play equal to that in which she coldly moralises over the body of Darnley to her accom- plice in the murder. So complete is her own remorselessness

in the matter, that she speaks with the true impartiality of calm judicial scorn, exaggerating nothing, discerning the pitifulness in such a life much more than in such a death, and not even moved either to soften a feature in his character, or to caricature one, by the instinct of self-reproach. Cold as steel, his murderess sees him as he was through a perfectly achromatic medium, setting down nothing in malice to excuse herself, and nothing in pity to make amends:— "Queen, Let me look on him. It is marred not much ;

This was a fair face of a boy's alive.

Bothwell. It had been better had he died ere man.

Queen. That hardly was he yesterday ; a man!

What heart, what brain of manhood had God sown In this poor fair fool's flesh to boar him fruit?

What seed of spirit or counsel ? what good hope That might have put forth flower in any sun?

We have plucked none up who cat him off at root, But a tare only or a thorn. His cheek Is not much changed, though since I wedded him His eyes had shrunken and his lips grown wan With sickness and ill living. Yesterday, Man or no man, this was a living soul ; What is this now? This tongue that mourned to me, These lips that mine were mixed with, these blind eyes That fastened on me following, these void hands That never plighted faith with man and kept, Poor hands that paddled in the sloughs of shame, Poor lips athirst for women's lips and wine, Poor tongue that lied, poor eyes that looked askant And had no heart to face men's wrath or love, As who could answer either,—what work now Doth that poor spirit which moved them ? To what use Of evil or good should hell put this or heaven, Or with what fire of purgatory annealed Shall it be clean and strong, yet keep in it One grain for witness of what seed it was, One thread, one shred enwoven with it alive, To show what stuff time spun it of, and rent?

I have more pity such things should be born Than of his death; yea, more than I had hate, Living, of him."

Were this much too bulky play more concentrated than it is into scenes of such power as this, there would be hardly any rank in English literature which it might not have attained. But the alloy is too ponderous and too freely distributed through the play to render it, as a whole, anything but heavy reading, in spite of its fine passages. Indeed, nothing is of the first order of merit in the drama, except the pictures generally of the Queen, of Darnley, and of the Calvinist prophet who- demands her execution. John Knox, however, is not only a very fine, but a very concentrated bit of historic painting. There is no diffuseness, no wearisome repetition in the self-delineation of his character. Doubtless the long address to the people of Edinburgh in which he paints Mary Stuart as the centre and source of all the crime of which she had been the occasion, is the finest part of Mr. Swinburne's portrait of him. But it is far too long for extract, and even the unrivalled grandeur of certain passages in it loses by separation from the context. Therefore we prefer to give our readers a glimpse of Mr. Swinburne's John Knox, as he has introduced him into an earlier scene, when, after being dismissed by the Queen in high displeasure, and while he is awaiting:what

lie has good reason to think may be virtually a sentence of death, be enters into a discussion with one of the attending Manes, Mary Beaton, on the true character of divine peace:— "Mary Beaton. Sir, for myself, small joy this were to me That this life should live over ; nor would I

Caro much by praying to stretch my days of life

Into more length, nor much to take with me

Garnish or gold; but one thing I would fain Have to go gravewards with me and keep it safe, That you have cast no word or warning on, And yet women, whose hearts ate worldly-worn Aud by no creed of yours consolable Nor gladness of your gospel, love its name As dear as God's; and its name is but rest.

John Knox. Rest has no other name but only God's.

Mary Beaton. But God has many another name than rest :

Hij name is life, and life's is weariness.

John Knox. Ay, but not his; that life has lost his name;

Peace is his name, and justice.

Mary Beaton. Ab, sir, see, Can these two names be one name ? or on earth Can two keep house together that have name Justice and peace ? where is that man i' the world Who bath found peace in the arms of justice lain Or justice at the breast of peace asleep ? Is not God's justice painted like as ours, A strong man armed, a swordsman red as fire, Whose bands ars hard, and his feet washed in blood ? It were an iron peace should sleep with him, And rest were unrest that should kiss his lips. What man would look on justice here and live, Peace has no more part in him. John Knox. Lady, nay,

That only peace indeed which is of God Rath in the just man not a part but all, But the whole righteous life and heart in him Still peacefully possesses; who bath not Or loves not justice, he can love not peace, For peace is just; and that thing is not peace

That such men love, but full of strife and lies, A thing of thorns and treasons. This were oven

As if a man loving a harlot should Praise her for maiden and himself for pure To love such maidenhood, when any says

That he loves peace who loves not holiness,

For peace is holy. Yea, and if one seek He shall find peace where bitterest justice is, In the full fire and middle might of wrath, Rather than whoro sloth sucks the lips of shame Or fear with her foul brother unbelief Lives in adultery ; strife is that which springs, As a winged worm and poisonous, of their sheets; And in the slumberloss and storm-strewn bed That very war's self spreads for righteousness

Peace as a babe is born."

If Calvinism had always betrayed this same profound sympathy with that Pauline thirst for righteousness from which it took, theo- logically speaking, its departure,—and, alas! how wide a departure, —Calvinism would not be the word of reproach it is, even in spite of its false metaphysics. And no doubt Mr. Swinburne is historically right in making Knox base his teaching, not on metaphysics, but on the same foundation as St. Paul. Certainly this play will not be without a great moral as well as poetical influence in Scotland, if it should bring back the Scotch theology to the higher ground from which, by logical and metaphysical paths, it has deviated since the time of Knox.

As a speech of Mary Beaton's is the occasion for the passage we have just extracted, we may take occasion to remark that this figure in Mr. Swinburne's drama is not a little enigmatic,—that neither its dramatic nor its intellectual meaning is at all clear. Mary Beaton is meant to be something of a visionary, partially endowed with the faculty of second-sight, a reverie-loving spectator of the bloody drama going on before her eyes, conscious of a certain amount of foresight of its issues, cold in the times of her mistress's joy, zealous in the time of her calamity, yet not loving the Queen, and apparently not unwilling to hasten her steps in the path of destruction. Thus she apprises Bothwell of the coming murder of Rizzio, and advises him to keep away from Court that night, and to profit by the results of the crime in which he does not share ; and later in the drama, she excuses the Queen to herself, for her heartless indifference to her own and Darnley's child. Yet if she is meant to be in any sense Mary's evil genius, contem- plating her downward path, and anticipating her evil destiny, with any sort of imaginative zest in the prospect, the sketch is too shadowy and incomplete to attain its end ; and what other purpose this enigmatic figure is meant to answer, unless it be simply that of an intellectual foil to the Queen's violent passions, it is not easy to see.

On the whole, and in spite of great scenes and wonderful passages in which there is a self-restraint and a force of drawing such as Mr. Swinburne has never before equalled, we are disappointed with Bothwell. A great part of it is heavy

reading. The uninstructive faction-histories of the time are in- corporated in it at far too great length. Even the calm and regal statesmanship of Murray is not made dramatic as Shakespeare would have made it, and the subordinate leaders of parties are in- tolerably dull. The scenes preceding the murder of Rizzio and of Darnley are exceedingly fine, and the lyric in which Rizzio gives a foretaste of his own tragic end is one of the most wonderful, after its own mystic fashion, in the language. But the play is ruined by historical padding. Of the five hundred and thirty-two pages, half at least might have been, we do not merely say spared, but got rid of, to the vast gain in vivid- ness and force of those that remained. Scotch history is almost always wearisome except in the hands of Sir Walter Scott. In Mr. Swinburne's hands it has not escaped its usual character- istic. Ile is a fine poet, but he has in vain endeavoured to throw himself into the heart of the Scotch cabals. He has failed in doing so, and the effort to make a great national drama out of his fine study of one or two picturesque and tragic fates, has spoiled what might have been a great poem and play.