This from one woman to another, much more from one princess to another; from the elated to the captive, could not be said, surely.-Nor do I see there was any need of it: For had the poet made Hermione on this occasion. (her own empire secured, as she thought) give a more generous and humane answer, would it not have heightened the distress, when such a character should sink, as she had been basely injured by the man she loved, and whose crime was owing to the rage of slighted love? Why should he choose to make Andromache's part thus nobly moving, at the expense of the other character, in a point where justice, generosity, and humanity were so much concerned? And would not a fine instruction have lain here for the audience, to have had compassion for the distresses of another; and so much the more, as that other was a rival sunk at the feet of the prosperous?-Indeed, Hermione, which, by the way, Mrs. Porter acted incomparably, is a character full of rage and violence; of jealousy, and great cause she had for it: But what then? Could she not, a princess as she was, when her own love was secured, for so she thought, have been made capable of feeling a distress so nobly pleaded, by motives so becoming a mother's lips. and a bridal virgin's prospects?-But I am upon the author's beauties.

Andromache's plea to Pyrrhus, when, thus insulted by Hermione, she sees no hope of any way to preserve her son, but by soothing the proud heart of the prince, whom her refusal had incensed, is very sweet in the mouth of captive royalty:

-Oh, sir, excuse

The pride of royal blood, that checks my soul,

And knows not how to be importunate.

You know, alas! I was not born to kneel,

To sue for pity, and to own a master.

And afterwards:

Behold how low you have reduced a queen !
These eyes have seen my country laid in ashes;

My kindred fall in war; my father slain;
My husband dragged in his own blood; my son
Condemned to bondage; and myself a slave.
Yet, in the midst of these unheard-of woes,
'Twas some relief to find myself your captive;
And that my son, derived from ancient kings,
Since he must serve, had Pyrrhus for his master.
When Priam kneeled, the great Achilles wept ;

I hoped I should not find his son less noble;

I thought the brave were still the most compassionate.
Oh do not, sir, divide me from my child,

If he must die

Then there is a fine scene recollected by Andromache to her woman, between Hector and herself, on the morning he set out for the action in which he was slain:

That morn, Cephisa! that ill-fated morn!

My husband bid thee bring Astyanax.
He took him in his arms; and, as I wept,
My wife, my dear Andromache, said he,
(Heaving with stifled sighs, to see me weep.)

Finely said, and the hero all preserved! He sighed, not for fear of the foe, but to see his beloved lady weep!From that HUMANITY, which should always be inseparable, I think, whether in fiction or fact, from true heroism: and that other inseparable, PIETY; as follows:

What fortune may attend my arms, the gods
Alone can tell. To thee I give the boy;
Preserve him as the token of our loves.
If I should fall, let him not miss his sire,
While thou surviv'st, but, by thy tender care,
Let the son see that thou didst love his father.

And the advice, left by Andromache with Cephisa, for her son, when she resolves to kill herself, after the nuptial ceremony is performed, is very worthy; after a scene of passionate fondness well expressed:

-Let him know

I died to save him.-And would die again.
Season his mind with early hints of glory :
Make him acquainted with his ancestors;

Trace out their shining story in his thoughts:
Dwell on the exploits of his immortal father,
And sometimes-

Very pretty:

-let him hear his mother's name :

Let him reflect upon his royal birth

"

With modest pride. Pyrrhus will prove a friend :
But let him know he has a conqueror's right.
He must be taught to stifle his resentments,

And sacrifice his vengeance to his safety.

And to his gratitude too, madam, should it not have been said, when he was so generously protected against the demand and menaces of confederate kings?

Should he prove headstrong, rash, or unadvised,

He then would frustrate all his mother's virtue,

Provoke his fate, and I shall die in vain!

Very nobly said! But I cannot forbear making one observation on occasion of self-murder, which, however the poets may be justified by the examples of the Greeks and Romans, when they draw their stories from them, yet, in such a gloomy, saturnine nation as ours, where self-murders are more frequent than in all the Christian world besides, methinks all those stories should be avoided for public entertainment: Or, where there is a necessity, as in the play of Cato, for instance, to introduce such a wicked practice, the bad example should be obviated, and the poison it may administer antidoted by more forcible lessons than what these few doubtful words express:

I fear I've been too hasty !

So, in this tragedy I am speaking of, when Hermione destroys herself, and Andromache designs to do the like, should the English poet have left this practice unguarded or unaccompanied by proper lessons and censures in such a country as ours?

The staggering doubts and distress of Hermione, after

she had engaged Orestes in the murder of Pyrrhus, between her love and her resentment; her questions to her woman, whether, as he approached the temple to marry her rival, in breach of his vows of betrothment to her, his countenance showed not some tokens of remorse; are very natural to one in her amorous circumstances, I fancy :

But, say, Cleone, didst thou mark him well?
Was his brow smooth? Say, did there not appear
Some shade of grief? Some little cloud of sorrow?
Did he not stop? Did he not once look back?
Didst thou approach him? Was he not confounded?
Did he not-Oh! be quick and tell me all.

This, madam, I think is charmingly natural. And, on Cleone's answer, That he went to the temple all joy and transport, unguarded, and all his cares employed to gratify Andromache in her son's safety, it is the less to be wondered at that she should be quite exasperated, and forgetting all her love for the ungrateful prince, should say:

Enough! he dies !-the traitor!-Where's Orestes?

There are several circumstances of horror in this play, that made me shudder; but I think none like the description the poet puts into the mouth of Pylades, the inseparable friend of Orestes, who, far from avoiding to shock the soul of his friend, by gently insinuating the fate of that Hermione, on whom he had fixed his happiness, thus terribly, with all the aggravations that could attend such a tragedy, points out the horrid action; taking care even to make her as impious in her reproaches of the Deity for her own rashness, as she was in the violence by which she dies; and so leaving a dreadful example (which I presume was net needful to be left) of final impenitence, especially in a suffering character, that had not merited the evils she met with.

Thus it is described; and I am affected with the transcription of a passage which the poet has laboured more

than he ought, I think, to show the force of his descriptive

vein :

Full of disorder, wildness in her looks,

With hands expanded, and dishevelled hair,

Breathless and pale, with shrieks she sought the temple.
In the midway she met the corpse of Pyrrhus :
She startled at the sight! then, stiff with horror,
Gazed frightful! Wakened from the dire amaze,
She raised her eyes to heaven with such a look
As spoke her sorrows, and reproached the gods !
Then plunged a poniard deep within her breast,
And fell on Pyrrhus, grasping him in death!

This, from a friend, to a lover of the miserable Hermione, though the poet might think it the only way he had left to make Orestes run quite distracted, yet was not, I presume to say, very judiciously put into the mouth of a beloved friend, anxious for his safety, and to get him off, after the murder; and whose part, till now, had been rather that of soothing, like a true friend, the sorrows of his mind.

The moral of the whole only regards Andromache; nor is there, indeed, anything but violence and terror in the rest of the story and characters, as if the poet was determined to sink all into one, and make that great, at the expense of the rest. 'Tis, however, in my humble opinion, a good one, to show that persons in distress ought never to despond, be their afflictions what they will: and ought to have weighed with Andromache herself, to make her avoid the crime of suicide, which she had resolved upon, since this moral is put into her mouth; but so late, that it seems rather to make her good by an event she could not foresee, than by the prudence of her reflections, which would not, without that event, have prevented her from a rash action, that must have rendered the moral ineffectual:

Though plunged in ills, and exercised in care,
Yet never let the noble mind despair,
Where pressed by dangers, and beset with foes,

The gods their timely succour interpose;

And when our virtue sinks, o'erwhelmed with grief,
By unforeseen expedients bring relief.