The Lady
Mabel is finely drawn. Pity that the catastrophe should be wrought
by the deliberate lie of Lady Lydia; for beside that lovers, as they
of all men speak the most direct speech, easily pierce the cobwebs of
fraud, it is a weak way of making a play, to hinge the crisis on a
lie, instead of letting it grow, as in life, out of the faults and
conditions of the parties, as, for example, in Goethe's Tasso. On
all accounts but one, namely, the lapse of five years between two
acts, the play seems to be eminently fit for representation. Mr.
Marston is also the author of two tracts on Poetry and Poetic
Culture.
Another member of this circle is Francis Barham, the dramatic
poet, author of "The Death of Socrates," a tragedy, and other pieces;
also a contributor to the Monthly Magazine. To this gentleman we are
under special obligations, as he has sent us, with other pamphlets, a
manuscript paper "On American Literature," written with such flowing
good will, and with an aim so high, that we must submit some portion
of it to our readers.
Intensely sympathizing, as I have ever done, with the great
community of truth-seekers, I glory in the rapid progress of that
Alistic, (* 2) or divine literature, which they develop and
cultivate.
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