great scale, and he seems to feel pretty comfort-[ able. But the Stranger shows him "his wife," Helena, the most enchanting creature in the world; and the most cruel hearted,-for notwithstanding the easy temper of her husband, she will not grant Faust the smallest encouragement, till he have killed Käthe, his own living helpmate, against whom he entertains no manner of grudge. Nevertheless, reflecting that he has a stock of four mortal sins to draw upon, and may well venture one for such a prize, he determines on killing Käthe. But here matters take a bad turn; for having poisoned poor Käthe, he discovers, most unexpectedly, that she is in the family way; and therefore that he has committed not one sin but two! Nay before the interment can take place, he is farther reduced, in a sort of accidental self-defence, to kill his father; thus accomplishing his third mortal sin; with which third, as we shall presently discover, his whole allotment is exhausted, a fourth, that he knew not of, being already on the score against him! From this point, it cannot but surprise us that bad grows worse: catchpoles are out in pursuit of him, "black masks" dance round him in a most suspicious manner, the brick-faced stranger seems to laugh at him, and Helena will nowhere make her appearance. That the sympathizing reader may see with his own eyes how poor Faust is beset at this juncture, we shall quote a scene or two. The first may, properly enough, be that of those "black masks." SCENE SEVENTH. Alighted Hall. (In the distance is heard quick dancing-music. Masks pass FAUST (rushing stormfully into the foreground.) No, not the fourth. . . . the blackest sin! No! No! (In the excess of his outbreaking anguish, he hides his face in his hands.) O, I am altogether wretched! (Three black Masks come towards him.) Below, too! down in Purgatory! Hear ye? A stirring there? 'Tis time then! Hui, your servant! Till midnight! (Exeunt both Masks hastily.) FAUST (clasping his brow.) Ha! What begirds me here? (Stepping vehemently Down with your masks! (Violent knocking without.) Is madness coming on me?— VOICE (violently, from without.) Open, in the king's name! (The music ceases. Thunderclap.) FAUST (staggers back.) I have a heavy dream!-Sure, 't is not doomsday? VOICE (as before.) Here is the murderer! Open! open, then! FAUST (wipes his brow.) Has agony unmann'd me ? SCENE EIGHTH. BAILIFFS. Where is he? where? From these merely terrestrial constables, the jovial Stranger easily delivers Faust; but now comes the long-looked-for tête-à-tête with Helena, SCENE TWELFTH. (FAUST leads HELENA on the stage. She also is close masked. The other Masks withdraw.) FAUST (warm and glowing.) No longer strive, proud beauty! HELENA. Ha, wild stormer ! FAUST. My bosom burns-! HELENA. The time is not yet come. FAUST. O, save me !! STRANGER (clutches him with irresistible force: whirls him round, so that FAUST's face is towards the spectators, whilst his own is turned away: and thus he looks at him, and bawls with thundering voice :) 'T is I!!-(A CLAP OF THUNDER. FAUST, with gestures of deepest horror, rushes to the ground, uttering an inarticulate cry. The other, after a pause, continues, with cutting coolness :) Is that the mighty Hell-subduer, That threatened me ?-Ha, ME!! (with highest contempt.) Worm of the dust! I had reserved thy torment for-myself !! FAUST (rises erect, and seems to recover his strength.) STRANGER. Thou, no! FAUST (rising in his whole vehemence.) Accursed! Ha, I am! I am! -And so forth, through four pages of flame and ice, till at last, FAUST (insisting.) Down at my feet! I am thy master! STRANGER. No more!! Is concluded!! The Fourth too is committed! My wife, my child, and my old Father's blood-! FAUST. That is my covenant! The couch is ready, there! Come, Bridegroom, to thy fire-nuptials! (She sinks, with a crashing thunder-peal, into the ground, out of which issue flames.) All this is bad enough; but mere child's-play to the "Thirteenth Scene," the last of this strange eventful history: with some parts of which we propose to send our readers weeping to their beds. SCENE THIRTEENTH. (The STRANGER hurls FAUST, whose face is deadly pale, back to the stage, by the hair.) FAUST. Ha, let me fly!-Come! Come! STRANGER (with wild thundering tone.) 'T is over now! FAUST. STRANGER. This signature-was thy most damning sin! FAUST (raging.) Ha, spirit of lies!! &c., &c. STRANGER (in highest fury.) Down, thou accursed! (He drags him by the hair towards the back-ground; at this moment, amid violent thunder and lightning, the scene changes into a horrid wilderness; in the back-ground of which, a yawning Chasm: into this the Devil hurls Faust; on all sides Fire rains down, so that the whole in- FAUST (huzzaing in wild defiance.) (Thunder, lightning, and fire. Both sink. The Curtain falls.) On considering all which supernatural transactions, the bewildered reader has no theory for it, except that Faust must, in Dr. Cabanis's That horrid visage!-throwing himself, in a tremor, phrase, have laboured under "obstructions in on the STTANGER's breast.) Thou art my Friend! Protect me!! STRANGER (laughing aloud.) Ha ha ha! the epigastric region," and all this of the Devil, and Helena, and so much murder and carousing, have been nothing but a waking dream, or other atrabilious phantasm; and regrets that the poor Printer had not rather applied to some Abernethy on the subject, or even, by one sufficient dose of Epsom-salt, on his own prescription, have put an end to the whole matter, and restored himself to the bosom of his afflicted family. but, after all, it can profit him but little; nay, many times, what is sugar to the taste may be sugar-of-lead when it is swallowed. Better were it for Müllner, we think, had fainter thunders of applause, and from fewer theatres, greeted him. For what good is in it, even were there no evil? Though a thousand caps leap into the air at his name, his own stature is no hair's breadth higher; neither even can the final estimate of its height be thereby in the smallest degree enlarged. From gainsayers these greetings provoke only a stricter scrutiny; the matter comes to be accurately known at last; and he, who has been treated with foolish liberality at one period, must make up for it by the want of bare necessaries at another. No one will deny that Müllner is a Such, then, for Dr. Klingemann's part, is his method of constructing Tragedies; to which method it may perhaps be objected that there is a want of originality in it; for do not our own British Playwrights follow precisely the same plan? We might answer that, if not his plan, at least, his infinitely superior execution of it, must distinguish Klingemann: but we rather think his claim to originality rests on a different ground, on the ground, namely, of his entire contentment with himself and with this his dramaturgy; and the cool heroism with which, on all occasions, he avows that contentment. Here is no poor, cowering, underfoot Play-person of some considerable talent: we underwright, begging the public for God's sake not stand he is, or was once, a Lawyer; and can to give him the whipping which he deserves; believe that he may have acted, and talked, but a bold perpendicular Playwright, avowing and written, very prettily in that capacity: himself as such; nay, mounted on the top of but to set up for a Poet was quite a different his joinery, and therefrom exercising a sharp enterprise, in which we reckon that he has critical superintendence over the German altogether mistaken his road, and these mobDrama generally. Klingemann, we under-cheers have led him farther and farther astray. stand, has lately executed a theatrical Tour, as Don Quixote did various Sallies; and thrown stones into most German Playhouses, and at various German Playwriters; of which we have seen only his assault on Tieck; a feat comparable perhaps to that "never-imagined adventure of the Windmills." Fortune, it is said, favours the brave; and the prayer of Burns's Kilmarnock weaver is not always unheard of Heaven. In conclusion, we congratulate Dr. Klingemann on his Manager-dignity in the Brunswick Theatre; a post he seems made for, almost as Bardolph was for the Eastcheap waitership. Several years ago, on the faith of very earnest recommendation, it was our lot to read one of Dr. Müllner's Tragedies, the Albanäserinn ; with which, such was its effect on us, we could willingly enough have terminated our acquaintance with Dr. Müllner. A palpable imitation of Schiller's Eraut von Messina; without any philosophy or feeling that was not either perfectly commonplace or perfectly false, often both the one and the other; inflated, indeed, into a certain hollow bulk, but altogether without greatness; being built throughout on mere rant and clangour, and other elements of the most indubitable Prose: such a work could But now, like his own Ahasuer, Doctor not but be satisfactory to us respecting Dr. Klingemann must "go on-on-on;" for ano- Müllner's genius as a Poet; and time being ther and greater Doctor has been kept too long precious, and the world wide enough, we had waiting, whose seven beautiful volumes of privately determined that we and Dr. Müllner Dramatische Werke might well secure him a were each henceforth to pursue his own better fate. Dr. Müllner, of all these Play- course. Nevertheless, so considerable has wrights, is the best known in England; some been the progress of our worthy friend, since of his works have even, we believe, been then, both at home and abroad, that his labours translated into our language. In his own are again forced on our notice: for we reckon country, his fame, or at least notoriety, is also the existence of a true Poet in any country to supreme over all; no Playwright of this age be so important a fact, that even the slight promakes such a noise as Müllner; nay, many bability of such is worthy of investigation. there are who affirm that he is something far Accordingly, we have again perused the Albetter than a Playwright. Critics of the sixth banaserinn, and along with it, faithfully exand lower magnitudes, in every corner of Ger- amined the whole Dramatic works of Müllner, many, have put the question a thousand times: published in seven volumes, on beautiful paWhether Müllner is not a Poet and Dramatist? per, in small shape, and every way very fit for To which question, as the higher authorities handling. The whole tragic works, we should maintain an obstinate silence, or, if much rather say: for three or four of his comic perpressed, reply only in groans, these sixth-formances sufficiently contented us; and some magnitude men have been obliged to make answer themselves; and they have done it with an emphasis and vociferation calculated to dispel all remaining doubts in the minds of men. In Müllner's mind, at least, they have left little; a conviction the more excusable, as the playgoing vulgar seem to be almost unanimous in sharing it; and thunders of applause, nightly through so many theatres, return him loud acclaim. Such renown is pleasant food for the bungry appetite of a man, and naturally he rolls it as a sweet morsel under his tongue: two volumes of farces, we confess, are still unread. We have also carefully gone through, and with much less difficulty, the Prefaces, Appendices, and other prose sheets, wherein the Author exhibits the “fata libelli;” defends himself from unjust criticisms, reports just ones, or himself makes such. The toils of this task we shall not magnify, well knowing that man's life is a fight throughout: only having now gathered what light is to be had on this matter, we proceed to speak forth our verdict thereon; fondly hoping that we shall then have done with it, for an indefinite period of time. Dr. Müllner, then, we must take liberty to believe, in spite of all that has been said or sung on the subject, is no Dramatist; has never written a Tragedy, and in all human probability will never write one. Grounds for this harsh, negative opinion, did the "burden of proof" lie chiefly on our side, we might state in extreme abundance. There is one ground, however, which, if our observation be correct, would virtually include all the rest. Dr. Müllner's whole soul and character, to the deepest root we can trace of it, seems prosaic, not poetical; his Dramas, therefore, like whatever else he produces, must be manufactured, not created; nay, we think that his principle of manufacture is itself rather a poor and second-parzer again is a sadder and perhaps a wiser hand one. Vain were it for any reader to search in these seven volumes for an opinion any deeper or clearer, a sentiment any finer or higher, than may conveniently belong to the commonest practising advocate: except stilting heroics, which the man himself half knows to be false, and every other man easily waives aside, there is nothing here to disturb the quiescence of either heart or head. This man is a Doctor Utriusque Juris, most probably of good juristic talent; and nothing more whatever. His language, too, all accurately measured into feet, and good current German, so far as a foreigner may judge, bears similar testimony. Except the rhyme and metre, it exhibits no poetical symptom; without being verbose, it is essentially meager and watery; no idiomatic expressiveness, no melody, no virtue of any kind; the commonest vehicle for the commonest meaning. Not that our Doctor is destitute of metaphors and other rhetorical furtherances; but that these also are of the most trivial character: old threadbare material, scoured up into a state of shabby-gentility; mostly turning on "light" and "darkness;" "flashes through clouds," "fire of heart," "tempest of soul," and the like, which can profit no man or woman. In short, we must repeat it, Dr. Müllner has yet to show that there is any particle of poetic metal in him; that his genius is other than a sober clay-pit, from which good bricks may be made; but where, to look for gold or diamonds were sheer waste of labour. which indeed is no very mighty affair; Grillparzer being naturally but a treble pipe in these matters; and Klingemann blowing through such an enormous coach-horn, that the natural note goes for nothing, becomes a mere vibration in that all-subduing volume of sound. At the same time, it is singular enough that neither Grillparzer nor Klingemann should be nearly so tough reading as Müllner, which, however, we declare to be the fact. As to Klingemann, he is even an amusing artist; there is such a briskness and heart in him; so rich is he, nay, so exuberant in riches, so full of explosions, fire-flashes, execrations, and all manner of catastrophes: and then, good soul, he asks no attention from us, knows his trade better than to dream of asking any. Grillcompanion; long-winded a little, but peaceable and soft-hearted: his melancholy, even when he pules, is in the highest degree inoffensive, and we can often weep a tear or two for him, if not with him. But of all Tragedians, may the indulgent Heavens deliver us from any farther traffic with Dr. Müllner! This is the lukewarm, which we could wish to be either cold or hot. Müllner will not keep us awake, while we read him; yet neither will he, like Klingemann, let us fairly get asleep. Ever and anon, it is as if we came into some smooth quiescent country; and the soul flatters herself that here at last she may be allowed to fall back on her cushions, the eyes meanwhile, like two safe postillions, comfortably conducting her through that flat region, in which are nothing but flax-crops and milestones; and ever and anon some jolt or unexpected noise fatally disturbs her; and looking out, it is no waterfall or mountain chasm, but only the villanous highway, and squalls of October wind. To speak without figure, Dr. Müllner does seem to us a singularly oppressive writer; and perhaps, for this reason, that he hovers too near the verge of good writing; ever tempting us with some hope that here is a touch of poetry; and ever disappointing us with a touch of pure Prose. A stately sentiment comes tramping forth with a clank that sounds poetic and heroic: we start in breathless expectation, waiting to reverence the heavenly guest; and, alas, he proves to be but an old stager dressed in new buckram, a stager well known to us, nay, often a stager that has already been drummed out of most well-regulated communities. So it is ever with Dr. Müllner: no feeling can be traced much deeper in him than the tongue; or perhaps when we search more strictly, instead of an ideal of beauty, we shall find some vague aim after strength, or in defect of this, after mere size. And yet how cunningly he manages the counterfeit! A most plausible, fair-spoken, close-shaven man; a man whom you must not, for decency's-sake, throw out of the window; and yet you feel that being pal pably a Turk in grain, his intents are wicked and not charitable! When we think of our own Maturin and Sheridan Knowles, and the gala-day of popularity which they also once enjoyed with us, we can be at no loss for the genus under which Dr. Müllner is to be included in critical physiology. Nevertheless, in marking him as a distinct Playwright, we are bound to mention that in general intellectual talent he shows himself very considerably superior to his two German brethren. He has a much better taste than Klingemann; rejecting the aid of plush and gunpowder, we may say, altogether; is even at the pains to rhyme great part of his Tragedies; and on the whole, writes with a certain care and decorous composure, to which But the grand question with regard to Mül the Brunswick Manager seems totally indif- ner, as with regard to these other Playwrights, ferent. Moreover, he appears to surpass is: where lies his peculiar sleight of hand in Grillparzer, as well as Klingemann, in a cer- this craft? Let us endeavour, then, to find out tain force both of judgment and passion; his secret,-his recipe for play-making; and Müllner acknowledges his obligations to Werner; but, we think, not half warmly enough. Werner was in fact the making of him; great as he has now become, our Doctor is nothing but a mere misletoe growing from that poor oak, itself already half-dead; had there been no Twenty-fourth of February, there were then no Twenty-ninth of February, no Schuld, no Albanäserinn, most probably no König Yngurd. For the reader is to understand that Dr. Müllner, already a middle-aged, and as yet a perfectly undramatic man, began business with a direct copy of this Twentyfourth; a thing proceeding by Destiny, and ending in murder, by a knife or scythe, as in the Kuruh case; with one improvement, indeed. that there was a grinding-stone introduced into the scene, and the spectator had the satisfaction of seeing the knife previously whetted. The Author too was honest enough publicly to admit his imitation; for he named this Play, the Twenty-ninth of February; and, communicate the same for behoof of the British | dramatists, is the Dr. Müllner, at present unnation. Müllner's recipe is no mysterious der consideration. Müllner deals in Fate and one; floats, indeed, on the very surface: might Fate only; it is the basis and staple of his even be taught, one would suppose, on a few whole tragedy-goods; cut off this one princitrials, to the humblest capacity. Our readers ple, you annihilate his raw material, and he may perhaps recollect Zacharias Werner, and can manufacture no more. some short allusion, in our First Number, to a highly terrific piece of his, entitled The Twentyfourth of February. A more detailed account of the matter may be found in Madame de Staël's Allemagne; in the Chapter which treats of that infatuated Zacharias generally. It is a story of a Swiss peasant and bankrupt, called Kurt Kuruh, if we mistake not; and of his wife, and a rich travelling stranger, lodged with them; which latter is, in the night of the Twenty-fourth of February, wilfully and feloniously murdered by the two former, and proves himself in the act of dying to be their own only son, who had returned home to make them all comfortable, could they only have had a little patience. But the foul deed is already accomplished, with a rusty knife or scythe; and nothing of course remains but for the whole batch to go to perdition. For it was written, as the Arabs say, "on the iron leaf;" these Kuruhs are doomed men; old Kuruh, the grandfather, had committed some sin or other; for which, like the sons of Atreus, his descend-in his Preface, gave thanks, though somewhat ants are "prosecuted with the utmost rigour:" nay, so punctilious is Destiny, that this very Twenty-fourth of February, the day when that old sin was enacted, is still a fatal day with the family; and this very knife or scythe, the criminal tool on that former occasion, is ever the instrument of new crime and punishment; the Kuruhs, during all that half century, never having carried it to the smithy to make hobnails; but kept it hanging on a peg, most injudiciously we think, almost as a sort of bait and bonus to Satan, a ready-made fulcrum for whatever machinery he might bring to bear against them. This is the tragic lesson taught in Werner's Twenty-fourth of February; and, as the whole dramatis persone are either stuck through with old iron, or hanged in hemp, it is surely taught with some considerable emphasis. reluctantly, to Werner, as to his master and originator. For some inscrutable reason, this Twenty-ninth was not sent to the green-grocer, but became popular: there was even the weakest of parodies written on it, entitled Eumenides Düster, (Eumenides Gloomy,) which Müllner has reprinted; there was likewise "a wish expressed" that the termination might be made joyous, not grievous; with which wish also, the indefatigable wright has complied; and so, for the benefit of weak nerves, we have the Wahn, (Delusion,) which still ends in tears, but glad ones. In short, our Doctor has a peculiar merit with this Twentyninth of his; for who but he could have cut a second and a third face on the same cherrystone, said cherry-stone having first to be borrowed, or indeed half-stolen? At this point, however, Dr. Müllner apWerner's Play was brought out at Weimar, parently began to set up for himself; and ever in 1809; under the direction or permission, as henceforth he endeavours to persuade his own he brags, of the great Goethe himself; and mind and ours that his debt to Werner terseems to have produced no faint impression minates here. Nevertheless clear it is that on a discerning public. It is, in fact, a piece fresh debt was every day contracting. For nowise destitute of substance and a certain had not this one Wernerean idea taken comcoarse vigour; and if any one has so obstinate plete hold of the Doctor's mind,-so that he a heart that he must absolutely stand in a was quite possessed with it; had, we might slaughter-house, or within wind of the gallows say, no other tragic idea whatever? That a before tears will come, it may have a very man, on a certain day of the month, shall fall comfortable effect on him. One symptom of into crime; for which an invisible Fate shall merit it must be admitted to exhibit,-an adap- silently pursue him; punishing the transgrestation to the general taste; for the small fibre sion, most probably on the same day of the of originality, which exists here, has already month, annually (unless, as in the Twentyshot forth into a whole wood of imitations. ninth, it be leap-year, and Fate in this may be, We understand that the Fate-line is now quite to a certain extent, bilked; and never resting an established branch of dramatic business in till the poor wight himself, and perhaps his Germany: they have their Fate-dramatists, just last descendant, shall be swept away with the as we have our gingham-weavers, and inkle- besom of destruction: such, more or less disweavers. Of this Fate-manufacture we have guised, frequently without any disguise, is the already seen one sample in Grillparzer's Ahn- tragic essence, the vital principle, natural frau but by far the most extensive Fate- or galvanic we are not deciding, of all Dr. manufacturer, the head and prince of all Fate- | Müllner's Dramas. Thus, in that everlasting |