palus were published in December 1821. In the Preface to the latter, Byron writes: "The Author has in one instance. attempted to preserve, and in the other to approach, the unities; conceiving that with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama. The writer is far from conceiving that anything he can adduce by personal precept or example can at all approach his regular, or even irregular, predecessors: he is merely giving a reason why he preferred the more regular formation of a structure, however feeble, to an entire abandonment of all rules whatsoever." Another open avowal that our poet is still following in the tracks of his model.

treatment

a) Subject-matter. It will by my task to investigate in which points of the dramatic treatment Alfieri's influence becomes obvious. I shall begin, as is my wont, with the subject-matter of the play. There is no doubt that the latter was again suggested by Alfieri: history or mythology had become the watch word by this time. But in this case, Byron was not so fortunate as he had been when dramatizing Sardanapalus. The plot is not capable of an effective dramatic it is void of any sustained interest, and does not enlist the reader's sympathy. The younger Foscari, who has been banished on an ungrounded suspicion, yields to a sickly yearning for his fatherland and plays the traitor in order to see again his much beloved country, though it be but to suffer the rack, and a cruel treatment at the hands of his countrymen. Turning on so unnatural a plot, lacking moreover all adequate introduction in favour of the self-imposed fetters of the unities, Byron's play proved an entire failure. Again I must agree with Gifford, when he says that, in order to call forth. our sympathy, "it behoved him [Byron] to set before our eyes the intolerable separation [of Jacopo Foscari] from a beloved. country, the lingering home-sickness, the gradual alienation of intellect, and the fruitless hope that his enemies had at length relented, which were necessary to produce a conduct so contrary to all usual principles of action as that which again. consigned him to the racks and dungeons of his own country. He should have shown him to us, first, taking leave of Venice, a condemned and banished man; next pining in Candia, next tampering with the agents of government; by which time...

"managed ill in confining the action of his Foscari to the day of the hero's final sufferings".

b) Characterisation.

But rather than secure for his work a greater success, and give it a more sustained interest, Byron blindly follows his master, though it be to his great disadvantage, and a deficient characterisation is the inevitable result of our poet's injudicious choice of his model. There is but one character tolerably will drawn in The Two Foscari that is Loredano all others being "lay figures" as Leslie Stephen would call them, not living creatures of real flesh and blood, who command our interest and sympathy in spite of ourselves.

c) Defects. However, a bad characterisation is not the only defect that arises from Byron's caprice of following the classical canons. The Two Foscari is a play altogether badly constructed, totally void of any conduct of action or rather of any action at all, the most essential of all requisites necessary for a good drama. The whole tragedy exhibits nothing but the catastrophe: there is no gradual rise in it, as well there might have been if, instead of sticking to the unities, Byron had introduced us to Foscari in the hour when he writes that fatal letter to the Duke of Milan, thus giving us insight into the passionate nature of his hero, and into the sickly, overstrained love for his country. As it is, the play is without a climax, and without the subsequent fall in the action; it hardly deserves the title of a drama, a fact felt by Byron himself, and openly avowed (cf. Medwin p. 141). In vindication of the unnatural delineation of characters as Marino Faliero and Jacopo Foscari, Byron said to Medwin: "That Faliero should for a slight to a woman, become a traitor to his country, and conspire to massacre all his fellow-nobles, and that the young Foscari should have a sickly affection for his native city, were no inventions of mine. I painted the men as I found them, as they were, not as the critics would have them." (Medwin p. 139.)

Chapter VI.

General Result.

That all the intrinsic defects in Byron's historical plays result from his too closely imitating the regular classic drama, the poet does not allow, but is sure to have felt; for his tragedies, written in the manner of Alfieri, proved total failures. In 1821, Marino Faliero was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, and was damned. Of the other two, Byron took good care that they were not acted on the ground, that they were not written for the stage, another proof that Byron himself did not think them fit for representation. But what sort of composition deserves the title of a drama that is unqualified for the stage? The defects arising from too close an imitation of Alfieri's diction and verse, exhibited in the Two Foscari as well as in Marino Faliero, have been discussed at full length.

From all that has been said, it may be inferred that Byron's over-great admiration of Alfieri's works did but lead to that pernicious result of considerably hampering the poet's genius by not allowing his originality, his own forcible diction, his mastery over language to have their own way. And we deplore this fact quite as heartily as Shelley does, who, in a letter to his wife, says: "He [Byron] affects to patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity, and although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice, and it will cramp and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he gets rid of it." (Moore p. 522.) And Shelley's words have proved prophetic.

To almost the same effect, Moore writes when discussing the poetical achievements of Byron's pen during his stay in Italy. He says that Byron's dramatic productions, in which his historical plays are, of course, included, "though the least successful of his compositions, have yet, as Poems, few equals in our literature; while, in a more especial degree, they illustrate the versatility of taste and power so remarkable in him, as being founded, and to this very circumstance, perhaps, owing their failure, on a severe classic model, the most uncongenial J. Hoops, Englische Studien. 33. I.

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assert". (Moore p. 583.)

Both writers and critics were Byron's most intimate and well - meaning friends both admit that the poet is following a track, most adverse to his natural propensity and genius. Byron himself felt that he had erred on the wrong side, though he does not openly avow it: what wonder then that henceforth we see him renouncing, once and for all, his ill chosen model, and adopting a style of treatment and of language much more congenial to his genius. In the Preface to his next following dramatic production, he seems to decline all partnership with Alfieri; for there we read: "I ought to add that there is a 'tramelogedia' of Alfieri, called Abele. — I have never read that, nor any other of the posthumous works of the writer, except his Life."

And with this formal declaration of Byron, we have come to the close of our investigation of Byron's admiration for the man Alfieri, and his imitation of Alfieri's works, an imitation which has given the stamp to a certain series of Byron's dramatic productions.

Regular and classical - their characters, imitations of the buskined impersonations of the ancient stage, hardly ever powerfully developed into creatures of real flesh and blood, the plot setting in in the very height of the action, without any adequate introduction, couched in a stiff, pathetic diction, in a monotonous, never varying measure: such are Lord Byron's dramatic compositions, written in imitation of Alfieri.

But that was not what English people were used to, since the days of their earliest dramatic representations, their own drama having grown out of the old Mysteries and Miracle plays of the 13th and 14th centuries, and out of the classic adaptations of the Renaissance. Both productions had combined to form the English national drama. Man is exhibited in it, as it were, from his very infancy. His mental, as well as bodily development, may be followed step by step; passions, good and evil, are seen to spring up and grow, they may be traced as we trace the growth of a plant. Freedom of will and necessity of nature are the two main

hereof, either favourable or fatal. or fatal. People

into the inner workings of the machinery, the workings of the passions in the human are the dramatic productions, the English have heir own, grown upon their own soil, out of 5, cultivated by their greatest dramatic master e "myriad-minded", independent of any foreign cal influence. And Gifford's words have come ays that Lord Byron "will, ere long, discover copying the irregularities (if he will call them the beauties of the English school, and of behe example of Shakespeare, a barbarian among Quarterly Review. Art X. Oct. 1822.) For it poet does due penance, and makes honourable old dramatists, by modelling it on their earliest tic production, and bestowing on it the name 7.

, December 1902.

Anna Pudbrès.

ELLOW'S POETISCHEN WERKEN.

1. Zur Golden Legend.

uellen zu Longfellow's Golden Legend hat Friedrich stschrift, der 44. versammlung deutscher philologen er dargeboten von den öffentlichen höheren lehrlens. Dresden, druck von B. G. Teubner, 1897. gehandelt. Auch ich habe vor jahren eine unterliesen stoff geführt und einen englisch geschriebenen Den der wissenschaftlichen prüfungskommission in ereicht. Da ich im ganzen zu denselben resultaten 1 wie Münzner, habe ich auf eine veröffentlichung beit verzichtet und teile im folgenden nur einige und ergänzungen mit. Ich zitiere die Tauchnitz'oetical Works, wo die Golden Legend im 2. bande gedruckt ist.

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