or of irreligion; indeed, they may claim the praise of inculcating strongly the immortality of the soul, by exemplifying in a variety of modes the existence of ghosts, and giving poetic form to flitting shades and love-lorn apparitions. Mr. Bray's motto justifies him against any charge of vanity in this publication -he aspires not to the character of poet, though he publishes poems; "Primum ego me illorum, dederim quibus esse poëtas, Sermoni propiona, putes hunc esse poëtam." 1 HOR Art. 42. 2s. 6d. Having exhausted the old world, modern dramatists have had recourse to the new; and the historic and poetic mines of Peru have been opened and ransacked by European adventurers. Some have acquired fame and enriched literature by their spoils; and, as example is contagious, it is probable that we shall frequently see some new name added to the list. Mr. Sotheby is one of those who have been allured by the treasures, or the novelty, of the unrifled annals of Peru: but we cannot discern much skill and ingenuity in the use of his new materials. The siege of Cuzco possesses no very prominent features either of excellence or imperfection. The plot is rather defective in interest; and though the characters of Zamorin, Villoma, and Zama, are intitled to our sympathy, the situations in which they appear are too deficient in pathos to excite any high degree of feeling for them. The author professes to have slightly imitated our early dramatie writers, in some of the unimpassioned parts of the Tragedy. Whether the following lines form any part of the imitated style, we know not: but we should rather suppose that their inaccuracy must have escaped the notice of the author, than that he purposely, and from a feeling of taste, adopted any thing so harsh and imperfect, however sanctioned by authority or example: There none beheld him, but the hopeless widow, That ceased from tears when he came; and the orphan child, Ye little deem'd, That from her ice-crown'd heights, and caves of the rock, &c. p. 18, And he so limn'd him With out-strain'd eye, dark cheek, and drops on his brow ;' &c. p. 39. Fell on the brave: while strange extravagant tales That made the Spaniards gods, found sure belief,' &c. p. 85. Art. 43. The few and the Doctor. A Farce, in Two Acts, as We We never saw this farce represented, but we began to read it with a degree of predilection for the author on account of some former vocal productions. We expected some humour in the dialogue, if not originality in the characters; and we were not disappointed. The Jew's language and sentiments are, we believe, fac similes from Duke's-Place; and most of the other characters are marked by a favourite tag at the end of their speeches, like old Boniface's "Daughter Cherry as the saying is," which must have had a risible effect. The plot is not new, nor very intricate; if it were, in so short a piece, there would not be time to disintangle it. The chief merit consists in the dialogue, which is spirited, characteristic, and well seasoned with humour. Art. 44. Ramah Droog, a Comic Opera, in Three Acts. As performed with universal Applause at the Theatre Royal, CoventGarden. By James Cobb. Esq. 8vo. 28. Longman and Recs. Ramah Droog is the Name of a Fortress and Palace of an Indian Rajah, who had usurped the sovereignty of the hereditary Prince, and put him and all his family to death, except a daughter of the late Rajah, who escaped. A detachment of troops, sent from a British settlement in India against the usurper, having been surprised by the enemy, and defeated, are imprisoned in this fortress. Among these prisoners, is an Irish serjeant, whose brogue and blunders constitute the principal humour of the piece. The Bogtrotter passes himself off as a physician, and in that character is called in to the assistance of the sick Rajah; to whose malady he has nothing to administer but a potatoe. (risum teneatis?) This Irish panacea, however, cures the usurper; whose disorder was only the effect of too copious a dose of Claret; a liquor to which his Highness was not much accustomed. Liffy, the Serjeant, for this miraculous cure, is loaded with more honors than ever were heaped on Hippocrates or Esculapius. This Mock-Doctor has an Amazonian wife, who had assumed the dress and character of a soldier in the British ranks; and no virago of antiquity, or Poissarde of modern times, ever manifested more heroism. The piece ends (as an opera should end) happily. A second detachment of British troops, more prudent or more fortunate than the first, take the fort by storm; the captives are released; the usuper is deposed; the daughter of the murdered Rajah is raised to the throne, and is married to a neighbouring prince, a friend and ally of her father. This wild and confused fable seems, however, to have served as a vehicle for splendid scenes, decorations, Eastern pomp, and exhibitions of a prince in procession, a tyger chase, elephants, the women of the Zenanah, music, dancing girls, &c.; and the effects of all this show were probably much heightened in the representation by the talents of the performers: but in the closet, its merits are not above mediocrity. Out of eighteen characters, only three are strongly marked: the Irishman, his termagant wife, and a treacherous and rapacious Asiatic goaler; and these are not new on the stage. The rest rest are so uninteresting, and so much" without mark or likeli hood," that, whenever they enter, we want a nomenclator to inform us who and what they are. Much has been said in praise of the music, in news-papers favourable to the theatre in which this opera was performed: but of the validity of such praise, which is ever suspected, we can have no better proof than the frequency of representation; which we can scarcely think this drama could have supported, without some more powerful attrac tion than we were able to discover in perusal, either in the dialogue or the songs. Indeed, there is a roughness in the lyric part which it must be extremely difficult to smooth by good melody. In the operas of Metastasio, the words of the airs are sedulously selected; and the numbers are so polished, yet so marked, as to point out to a composer, at the first glance, the kind of movement which will best suit them. The double rhymes of Mr. Cobb, and the hobbling lines, render it scarcely possible to give them any cadence either in reading or singing. From the difficulty of comprehending the fable, or discovering even the sentiments of what is sung, the Italians prefix an argument to all their serious musical dramas, and an advertisement to the comic:-but we have here what is called an opera, with a hard name, not only without an argument or preface, but even without the least information concerning the interlocutors, in the list of persons of the drama. 1800. Art. 45. Crime from Ambition: a Play in Five Acts. Translated from the German of William Augustus Iffland, by Maria Geisweiler. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Geisweiler, Symonds, &c. We always wish to speak well of Mr. Iffland's plays, because they are not tainted with the libertine sentiments of the German schools; and of every fair translator we are ambitious to make a good report, when we can do it without a crime. If the public must read translations from the German, therefore, we can at least mention the present as a much less exceptionable piece than most of those of Kotzebue: but we are sorry to find the sentiment occasionally assisted by marginal directions, which may be truly called " Helping a lame dog over a stile." RELIGIOUS. Art. 46. Two Sermons preached before His Majesty at the Chapel Royal at St. James's, during Lent. By Brownlow, Bishop of Winchester. 4to. 1s. 6d. Wright. 1799. The first of these sermons is on the well known text, "The fool bath said in bis heart, there is no God;"-and the right reverend preacher justly observes that, In respect to the great Author of our being, the errors and mistakes of men may be traced to three general sources ignorance, superstition, and hardened unbelief-all fertile sources of evil, though of different degrees of malignity in evil; for ignorance and supersti tion, however unfriendly, are not hostile, to that truth which infidelity defies. Ignorance hath led mankind to absurd deifications, to the belief of false and imaginary gods of various kinds, animate and inanimate; but from this ignorance of man the existence of God was not concealed. Superstition hath absurdly falsified the object of its worship, the number and manner of its religious observances. With ideas too narrow to conceive, and to rely on, an unseen, yet all-provident God, Superstition shrinks under trivial apprehensions and causeless terrors, unless she can invest a variety of objects with the character of present deity, at hand to supply immediate and momentary help. But here we must observe, that the votary of false gods, and the votary of many gods, equally believe the reality of the Divine powers, and equally subscribe to the moral inferences arising from that belief. The ignorant and superstitious admit, that the object of Divine worship is good, and that man should emulate his goodness. The ignorant and superstitious acknowledge that law is the guide of man; and that to walk by the will of God, where his will Is to be discovered, is the end and purpose of his being; but it is reserved for the scriptural fool alone to say, "there is no God;" it is reserved for the unbeliever only to wander in the dark and loathsome paths of those who are " without God in the world." As one of the many pernicious effects of Atheism is stated to be a contempt of public authority, the Bishop is led to speak on the subject of civil government and religious establishments; which he maintains to be of divine origin.-Is there not some inconsistency, when his Lordship says, p. 10. The character my text describes bath never been a national character in any place, but such fools have been single and individual every where, and their folly in all places equally conspicuous, and equally odious; and when he adds, (p. 14.) in allusion to France, hath it even gloried in the national adoption of the odious character I have described?' The second sermon is nearly on the same subject as the first, from Psalm lviii, 2.; and here the Bishop continues his allusions to the state of a neighbouring country, and in the strongest terms imputes to that people the adoption of atheistical tenets. The conclusion of the discourse breathes a spirit of charity and piety, which will be acceptable to all true friends to religion, virtue, and their country : Good Christians, good citizens, and good men, serving our God, our community, and our neighbour, let us put away from us the enemies of the cross of Christ; let the friends of religion be our friends; let the supporters of law and government be our counsellors; let the disciples of moral truth and excellence be our companions; let us embrace with joy the hope which is held out to us; that'so long as the duties attached to these valuable characters are upheld and respected amongst us, so long shall we be yet allowed to worship our God in peace and truth, to live under the happy influence of his grace through the gospel, to be directed in all our ways by law, by honesty, and by charity; in a word, the com. prehensive word of an apestle, to love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the King' MISCEL. MISCELLANEOUS: Art. 47. An Account of the French Expedition to Egypt: compre hending a View of the Country of Lower Egypt, its Cities, Mo. numents, and Inhabitants, at the. Time of the Arrival of the French; and a particular Description and Measurement of Pompey's Pillar, illustrated by a Plate. By Charles Norry, Member of the Philotechnical Society, and one of the Architects attached to the Expedition. Translated from the French. 8vo. pp. 53. 2s. Ridgway. 1800. As yet, the men of science attached to the French expedition to Egypt have published nothing very superb, of very satisfactory. The present little pamphlet enters into no minute details, but is informing and amusing as far as it goes. M. Norry seems desirous of giving a fair statement: and though he relates the battle of the Nile with the feelings of a Frenchman, yet he owns that every thing proved fatal to them for which he attempts to account from the unfavourable position of their fleet, the inferiority of the crews in point of number, we understand that the inferiorit of numbers both in men and guns was on our side,) the explosion of the Admiral's ship, and the confusion that ensued as to the command.' He might have added to all these reasons, the superiority of British skill and valour: but, in a pamphlet originally designed for French readers, so unpalatable a truth is omitted. M. Norry's voyage to Egypt, and his return, are related; particularly his narrow escapes in his passage from Alexandria to Ancona : but it may be more satisfactory to our readers, to peruse the account of his sensations and impressions on his first arrival in Egypt. We immediately hastened to satisfy that eager curiosity excited in every foreigner on his first arrival in a country so celebrated in history. We looked for the Alexandria of Alexander, built by the architect Dinocrates; we looked for that city in which were born, er educated, so many great men, that library in which the Ptolomies had concentrated the collection of human knowledge; in a word, we looked for that commercial city and its active and industrious inhabitants; but we found in every quarter only ruins, barbarism, debasement, and poverty, ferocious men with enormous beards, carrying in their hands long pipes, most of them indolently seated in the squares or coffee. houses, or walking along with the most apathie gravity; women dressed in coarse blue tunics, their face covered with an ugly mask of black stuff, allowing only their eyes to be seen, and having not only their eyelashes but their eyebrows painted black, their legs and feet. naked, their nails dyed with bright red, avoiding us and running away, as if they had beheld so many demons, or savages; naked, lean, and ill-conditioned; and, lastly, the public markets (ba children ars) filthily disgusting. Shocked at this sight, we went to visit the remains of antiquity. We every where found columns of granite, some • * The men in easy circumstances, for the most part, shut theme selves up, or had fled; and we saw none of the women of this class, they being carefully confined under lock and key.' still |
