-and presenting, in all respects, a perfect contrast to the old notions of a fox-hunting society. But we have already trespassed on delicate ground, and perhaps filled as much space as an excursus of this nature should ever claim. It is this union of the elegant repose of life with the energetic sports of the field that constitutes the charm of Melton Mowbray ; and who can wonder that young gentlemen, untied by profession, should be induced to devote a season or two to such a course of existence? We must not, however, leave the subject without expressing our regret that resorting, year after year, to this metropolis of the chase should seem at all likely to become a fashion with persons whose hereditary possessions lie far from its allurements. It is all very well to go through the training of the acknowledged school of the craft;' but the country gentleman, who understands his duties, and in what the real permanent pleasure of life exists, will never settle down into a regular Meltonian. He will feel that his first concern is with his own proper district, and seek the recreations of the chase, if his taste for them outlives the first heyday of youth, among the scenes, however comparatively rude, in which his natural place has been appointed. ART. VIII.-Francis the First, an Historical Drama. IN By N an article in our last Number, we pointed out the curious fact, that, in the great creative days of the English national drama, so many of the most successful writers were connected with the stage. The poet and the actor met in the same personthe scenes and characters which he had conceived were represented under his own direction, and with his own personal assistance; he might suggest to his colleagues, or himself give the true tone and emphasis to his poetry; he might take care that justice should, if possible, be done to his most effective situations. Tradition, it is true, has not been so flattering to the histrionic fame, as the judgment of posterity to the unrivalled poetry of these old masters. None of them appear to have attained to firstrate eminence as actors. Shakspeare, while he stalked as the Ghost, had the modesty or the prudence to make over to a performer of greater skill or popularity, the graceful, the melancholy, the gentle, the passionate, the irresolute, the halfphrenzied, half-philosophical Prince of Denmark, a character requiring more depth of conception, more versatile and vigorous powers of execution, with greater discretion and judgment in the general tone and keeping, than any other in the whole circle of our theatre. Nearer our own days, the actors, some of them of the highest celebrity, have not been unambitious of dramatic fame. Garrick was a successful writer, yet, unassisted, never aspired beyond clever and lively farce, or, at the highest, the lighter comedy of modern life. The late Mr. Kemble was likewise haunted with visions of dramatic glory; but his impersonations of the noblest conceptions of others so completely obscured his ineffective attempts to obtain celebrity for his own, that of the thousands who have the image of his Coriolanus or his Wolsey, in all its living freshness, upon their memory, probably very few are aware that the great actor was not content with that circle within which none could walk but he.' From the announcement of Francis the First, it appeared, that the distinguished young actress, who has suddenly burst forth, to support the fortunes of her house, with powers of a very high order, and with indications of a depth and originality of conception rarely witnessed in a performer so unstudied and new to the stage, had likewise the high ambition of renewing the older days of our drama, and of reuniting the poet and the actor in their former close alliance. The most remarkable characteristic, however, of the tragedy before us, is its total and disdainful want of conformity to the present state of the stage. Far from accommodating itself with servile docility to the taste of the day, and displaying the nice tact, which might be acquired by familiarity with the incidents and situations-with the tone and manner of composition which produce the strongest effect on a modern audience-the tragedy of Francis the First is conceived in the spirit and conducted on the plan of a far different period. We mean not that an effective tragedy may not be cut out of this poem, as out of those of our older dramatists: but, according to its original conception, instead of condensing the whole interest, and concentrating it on two or three of the leading characters, and keeping down the subordinate parts, which must necessarily be entrusted to the dangerous hands of inferior performers, as nearly as possible to mutes;the piece before us is crowded with characters of the greatest variety, all of considerable importance in the conduct of the piece, engaged in the most striking situations, and contributing essentially to the main design. Instead of that simple unity of interest, from which modern tragic writers have rarely ventured to depart, it takes the wider range of that historic unity, which is the characteristic of our elder drama; moulds together, and connects by some common agent employed in both, incidents which have no necessary connexion; and--what in the present tragedy strikes us as on many accounts especially noticeable-unites by a fine though less perceptible moral link, remote but highly tragic events with the im mediate, mediate, if we may so speak, the domestic interest of the play. There is something, in our opinion, singularly bold and striking in the manner in which not only the dark intrigues of the Queen Mother and the ingratitude of the court towards the Constable de Bourbon are revenged in the battle of Pavia, but at the same time the Nemesis of the injured Françoise de Foix pursues the King to the fatal field. The double current of interest is made to flow again in one stream, if, as hereafter will appear, more languidly than might be likely to keep up the excitement of a spectator, or even of a reader, yet with so much Shakspearianism in the conception as to afford a remarkable indication of the noble school in which the young authoress has studied, and the high models, which, with courage, in the present day, fairly to be called originality, she has dared to set before her. In fact, Francis the First is cast entirely in the mould of one of Shakspeare's historical tragedies. Miss Kemble has aspired to manage all the infinite variety of character, the complication of plot, the succession of interest, which make our great dramatic poems of that class not merely full of scenic effect, but living pictures of the whole period to which their personages belong. The secret, however, of the total dissimilarity of Miss Kemble's tragedy to the modern race of successful dramas is extremely simple. It was written, we have been informed by persons who long ago perused the work in manuscript, several years before she appeared upon the stage, and at a time when she little anticipated the probability that she herself might be called upon to impersonate the conceptions of her own imagination. We believe that we are quite safe when we state that the drama, in its present form, was written when the authoress was not more than seventeen. We do not make this statement either to deprecate the severer criticism of others, or to account for any unusual tenderness in our own, but merely as explaining the singular anomaly of a tragedy, written by a successful actress, requiring as much alteration, we fear that we may add mutilation, in order to adapt it to the stage, as one of the most lawless and irregular compositions of the days of Elizabeth or James I. Without doubt, every work of imagination must eventually stand or fall by its own intrinsic merit. Though the adventitious circumstances under which a poem has been composed may excite a strong interest at the moment of its appearance, yet this artificial life, where there is no inherent principle of vitality, will quickly wither and expire. While, therefore, we are unwilling that the authoress should plead either youth or sex in bar of the sternest justice of criticism, it is unquestionably a remarkable phenomenon, that a youthful poetess, however nurtured in Shakspeare, should begin her dra matic matic career by placing her main strength in the vigorous delineation of historic character. In this respect there is certainly no dramatic author of the present day who might not be proud to own the Francis the First of Miss Kemble; while, in the skill and intricacy with which the more dramatic part of the plot is managed, and the double interest, as it were, linked together by means of the Monk Gonzales, she may fairly compete with the most ingenious playwrights of modern times; nor are the masculine strength, and sustained vigour of the language, breaking out occasionally into gleams of very sweet poetry, unworthy of the bold conception and powerful execution of the general design. Throughout there is that spirit and animation, without which neither forcible delineation of character nor cleverness of plot will excite or keep possession of the reader's mind. The tragedy is alive from the beginning to the end; although it must be acknowledged, that the main impulse is exhausted at the close of the fourth act, and the fifth, therefore, must depend on its administering, as it were, the poetic justice of the whole, and on the lofty, historical, and almost romantic associations, which give an interest and importance to the 'Battle of Pavia,'-the close, as it were, of the splendid and chivalrous warfare of the feudal period; the last in which a great monarch fought with his knightly lance, hand to hand, in the thickest of the fray. We shall reserve our observations on the various personages, as they open upon us during the progress of the play; but it is certainly worth remarking, that from the disguised Monk Gonzales to Clement Marot the poet and Triboulet the jester, they have all some character. We have, perhaps, too much of the passion of revenge; Gonzales himself may be drawn rather too nearly in the spirit of the Radcliffe school of modern romance, with a touch of not the better part of Byronism,-but still the delineation is one of great force and distinctness; and though among the female characters there is some slight similitude between Margaret and Françoise de Foix, they, too, are yet clearly discriminated; while both are drawn with much feminine gentleness and with words attuned to love,' the very different situations in which they are cast keep up a sufficient contrast and dissimilitude. The tragedy opens with the sudden and insulting recall of the Constable de Bourbon from the Milanese government, through the intrigues, it is supposed, but in reality the secret love, of the mother of Francis, Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angouleme, whom Miss Kemble takes the liberty of calling the Queen Mother. It is an historical fact, that this sprete injuria forme was the origin of her implacable hatred to De Bourbon-of all the wrongs heaped on his disdainful spirit, of his revolt, and remotely, there fore, fore, of the victory of Pavia and the sack of Rome. According to the quaint old translation of Mezeray by John Bulteel, Gent. the grave, tacite, and haughty humour of Charles of Bourbon did not suit well with the king's, which was pleasant, free, and open; and withal Madame, mortally offended that he disdained the love she had for him, pushed on her resentments all the ways imaginable, till in the end she had her revenge upon him at the expence of her son and the whole kingdom of France.' In the second scene, (the first is occupied in unfolding the general state of affairs,) the Queen Mother communicates to her confessor Gonzales her secret passion for De Bourbon, and her real design in his recall. 'Now, Queen.-Ay! this woman's hand, led by a woman's heart. I will confide what none, save only thou, Have known-must know. Note well the latter word! This hand can grant, or kingdom can confer.' Francis is introduced in a manner becoming the gallant monarch, who shone or tilted on the Field of the Cloth of Gold with our own young and then most princely Henry VIII. The following description of his appearance in the streets is full of spirit. He will be here anon. For as I rode, I passed him with his train, Peeped |