unjust when, not satisfied with pointing out blemishes in Shakespeare, he censured a whole nation as barbarous for admiring his works. He must, himself, have felt the excellence of a poet, whom, in this very tragedy of Zara, he has not disdained to imitate, and to imitate very closely too. The speech of Orasmane, (or Osman, as the English translation calls him,) beginning,

J'aurais d'un oeil serene, d'une front inalterable,

is almost a literal copy of the complaint of Othello:

-Had it rained

All sorts of curses on me, &c.

which is, perhaps, the reason why our translator has omitted it."-" I do not pretend to justify Voltaire," returned Sir H;"yet it must be remembered, in alleviation, that the French have formed a sort of national taste in their theatre,

correct, perhaps, almost to coldness. In Britain, I am afraid, we are apt to err on the other side; to mistake rhapsody for fire, and to applaud a forced metaphor for a bold one. I do not cite Dryden, Lee, or the other poets of their age; for that might be thought unfair: but, even in the present state of the English stage, is not my idea warranted by the practice of poets, and the applause of the audience? A poet of this country, who, in other passages, has often touched the tender feelings with a masterly hand, gives to the hero of one of his latest tragedies, the following speech:

Had I a voice like Etna when it roars,
For in my breast is pent as fierce a fire,
I'd speak in flames.

That a man, in the fervour and hurry of composition, should set down such an idea, is nothing; that it should be pardoned by

the audience, is little; but that it should always produce a clap, is strange indeed!"

"And is there nothing like this in French tragedies?" said the lady of the house; "for there is, I think, abundance of it in some of our late imitations of them."" Nay, in the translation of Zayre, Madam," returned the baronet, "Hill has sometimes departed from the original, to substitute a swelling and elaborate diction. He forgets the plain soldierly character of the Sultan's favourite Orasmin, when he makes him say,

Silent and dark

The unbreathing world is hush'd, as if it heard
And listen'd to your sorrows.

The original is simple description;

Tout dort, tout est tranquille, et l'ombre de la nuit.

And when the slave, in the 4th act, brings the fatal letter to the Sultan, and mentions the circumstances of its intercep

tion, the translator makes Osman stay to utter a sentiment, which is always applauded on the English stage, but is certainly, however noble in itself, very ill placed here:

--Approach me like a subject,

That serves the Prince, yet not forgets the man.

Osman had no breath for words: Voltaire gives him but five hurried ones:

Donne-qui la portuit ?-donne."

"I am quite of your opinion, Sir H--," said Mr

" and I may

add, that even Voltaire seems to me too profuse of sentiments in Zara, which, beautiful as they are, and though expressed with infinite delicacy, are yet somewhat foreign to that native language which feeling dictates, and by which it is moved. I weep at a few simple words expressive of distress; I pause to admire a sentiment, and my pity is forgotten. The

single line uttered by Lusignan, at the close of his description of the massacre of his wife and children,

Helas! et j'etais pere, et je ne pus mourir,

moves me more than a thousand sentiments, how just or eloquent soever."

"If we think of the noblest use of tragedy," said Mrs "we shall, perhaps, Sir, not be quite of your opinion. I, who am a mother, wish my children to learn some other virtues, beside compassion, at a play; it is certainly of greater consequence to improve the mind than to melt it." "I am sure, Mamma," said a young lady, her daughter, "the sentiments of tragedy affect me as much as the most piteous description. When I hear an exalted sentiment, I feel my heart, as it were, swell in my bosom, and it is always followed by a gush of tears from my eyes."

"You tell us the effects of your feelings, child; but you don't distinguish