the excellencies of Charles-and now-with pity pauses on his faults! now it shrinks with horror from the unprincipled atrocities of the gangand now it is suffered to languish on the pale, trembling bosom of Amelia. The Robbers has been censured, as a production baneful to society. The rigour of the Germanic institution prohibited the exhibition of it, and, under pain of imprisonment, the author was forbidden the use of his pen. As a most elegant and ample vindication, however, of the general principles it contains, is given in the preface, I shall content myself with particularizing some few passages, at once fraught with humanity and goodness. After the formidable and tremendous rescue of Roller from the hands of the executioner, the conversation in the second act, between Moor and Schufterle, proclaim how abhorrent were the feelings of the former, from the monstrous barbarity of the latter. "SWITZER. Schufterle, can you tell how many were killed? "SCHUFTERLE. Eighty-three, they say-the steeple crushed sixty of them to deatlt. "MOOR. (In a very serious tone.) Roller, you were dearly bought!: "SCHUFTERLE. Pah, pah! what signifies all that? indeed, if they had been men-but they were mere babies in leading-strings-mere bantlings-or old mother Shiptons, their nursesand perhaps a few poor atomies that had not strength to crawl to their doors-all that had any soul or spirit in them were at the show'twas the mere scum, the dregs that stayed at home. "MOOR. Poor wretches! the old-the decrepit-and the infants! "SCHUFTERLE. Ay-Devil burn 'em! a few sick wretches too-women in labour, perhaps, or just at the down-lying-Ha! ha! in passing one of these little barracks, I heard something squalling-I peeped in, and what do you think it was? a child-a stout little rogue, that lay on the floor beneath the table, and the fire just catching it!-Poor little fellow, said I, you are starving for cold there-and so I chucked him into the fire! "MOOR. Did you so, Schufterle? May that fire consume your body and soul, to all eternity! Out of my sight, you monster! never to be seen in my troop again!" I have already been too liberal in quotation; for this reason I must satisfy myself, however unwillingly, with only referring my readers to a very fine soliloquy of Moor, in the fourth act, when the robbers are all asleep; it reminds us of that celebrated one in Cato on the same occasion. "A long, long night! on which no morrow e'er shall dawn.-(Holding a pistol to his forehead.)-This little tube unites eternity to time! This awful key will shut the prisondoor of life, and open up the regions of futurity. Tell me! Oh tell! to what unknown, what stranger coasts thou shalt conduct me! The soul recoils within herself, and shrinks with terror from that dreadful thought." Thus Cato: -Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass? The reasonings of the two heroes, however, lead to opposite determinations: Cato falls upon his sword, whilst Moor throws away his pistol, "And shall I then rush to death, through slavish dread of living here in torment-No-I will bear it all. My pride shall conquer sufferance -let my destiny be accomplished." * The reader will thank me for referring him to a speech of Claudio, in Measure for Measure, on the same subject, which in sublimity very far exceeds them both: "Ah, but to die, &c." Act 3. scene 1. This principle of fatalism pervades the play, and we cannot help compassionating the man, who "considers himself as bound to guilt, by fetters which he has the constant wish but not the strength to break."+ Moor's delirious kind of melancholy, in the third act, where he laments, that innocence is now an alien from his bosom, is excessively interesting and tender. "MOOR. There was a time when I could not go to sleep if I had forgot my prayers.— "GRIMM. Have you lost your senses? what! yet a school-boy!-'twere fit indeed such thoughts should vex you! "MOOR. (Resting his head on Grimm's bosom.) Brother! Brother! "GRIMM. Come, be not a child; I beg it of you. "MOOR. A child! O that I were a child once more--Oh that I could return once more into the womb that bare me! that I hung an infant on the breast! that I were born a beggar-the meanest hind—a peasant of the field! I would toil till the sweat of blood dropt from my brow to purchase the luxury of one sound sleep-the rapture of one single tear!" His parental advice to Kozinski, who wished + Preface to "The Robbers." to initiate himself into the band of robbers, abounds with tenderness and humanity; and his last parting scene with Switzer and Kozinski is so exquisitely affecting, that insensibility herself must retire and weep, To apologise for those frequent violations of the grand unities both of time and place, which are observable, may not be an easy task; from Franconia to the frontiers of Saxony-from Leipzic to Bohemia, with the rapidity of imagination: Doctor Johnson, in his preface to Shakspeare, which, for harmony of diction, for justice of remark, and elevation of thought, may be coeternal with his author, defends that poet from the fulminating censures of criticism, on the principle that no "representation is mistaken for reality. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation: if the spectator can be once persuaded that his old acquaintance are Alex. ander and Cæsar, that a room illuminated with candles, is the plain of Pharsalia, or the banks of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason or of truth, and, from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature." |