...

"There is no strength nor firmness in man, nor constancy in human affairs. All things, as well within as without us, are in motion. . . . It is, however, chiefly from within ourselves, from the fickleness of our own hearts and the violence of various passions, that all our giddy changes, our dangerous agitations and unhappy lapses, proceed. . . . Like children turning swiftly about, we imagine the whole world is running round, and so vainly endeavor to stop the supposed motion of the world, when we ought rather to fix ourselves. In this whirl, we turn ourselves so quickly from one object, desire, or pursuit, to another, that few enjoyments or designs are brought to perfection. All things seem to dance around us, to present themselves in a swift succession, and retire along the circle, till the megrim of life grows too strong for our heads, and then ensues a fall into some folly, or crime, or affliction, from whence we rise not again till the head recovers, and repentance, which is little else than turning the contrary way, resettles all our thoughts and passions."

We sigh, as we close, over the failure of these quotations to produce the effect of his entire discourse. Skelton is positively peculiar in this respect. We feel as a tourist might who should bring home with him a fragment of the Antinous, and with that rouse an inspiration in the breasts of friends who have no conception of the original. We have given our readers precious stones, but they do not sparkle or gleam away from their setting. The attitude of a thought is essential to its recognition. and effect.

Skelton's controversial works, from which we have made no extracts whatever, are full of strength and argument. He was a voluminous writer. "Deism Revealed," "Appeal to Common Sense on the Subject of Christianity," "Juvenilia," "Senilia," or an Old Man's Miscellany, "Hylema," "Poems and Hymns," are proof of his intellectual wealth. He was thoroughly skilled in Plato and Aristotle. "Dialogue of the Gods" is written after the manner of Lucian. It is, on the a whole, a failure.

Philip Skelton was a splendid specimen of the physical man ; of “tall stature and majestic appearance." He was brave as Richard. He was a foe to everything cowardly and mean. He blew away from his indignant nostrils every sophistry. He was eloquent and practical. His heart was great, his feelings flowed in strong currents, and it was not possible for him in

his ardor, any more than for Dr. Chalmers, "to cordialize," as Alexander Knox says, "with a mere 'ens rationis.'

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His descriptive faculties were powerful. He made Dublin audiences shiver with excitement. His wit was not always successful, sometimes rough and destructive; but he had the sympathy of a woman.

Skelton is styled, in the "Philosophical Survey of Ireland," "the glory of the Irish Church." "His learning is almost universal, and his language uncommonly fluent and vigorous." "His flashes of wit keep the table in a roar."

Skelton says, in his "Hylema," "It sometimes happens by mere accident, that a train of wit or humor, like a train of gunpowder, flies about and flashes in a company, consisting of persons who were before, and shall be after, as dull as so many aldermen." Skelton knew well how to start such trains of wit.

The writer of this article is grateful to Skelton for many a mood of fervor, and for high incitements to better living. If he can persuade others to seek his acquaintance, and drink from the well of his eloquent learning, he will be content.

NOTE. In the motto of this article, in each line, read sequentur.

ARTICLE IV.

TRAGEDY OF ERRORS, AND SUCCESS.

Record of an Obscure Man. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 216.

Tragedy of Errors. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862. pp. 249. [Part I.]

Tragedy of Success. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862. pp. 191. [Part II.]

THE tragedies written for the closet are of a high order. Browning, Helps, and Taylor have taken the lead of late years in producing these exquisite studies of character. They do not

appeal to a large class of readers. They are essentially refined, and hence cannot be widely read. They were not written for the stage, and perhaps would fail of creating a sensation if acted; but in the library, read to a few friends, they are a delightful recreation. They belong to the chaste and delectable in litera

ture.

To the producers of these original and select works another is now to be added the nameless author of the " Tragedy of Errors." Her works (for we understand the writer to be a lady, and this her pen abundantly proves) are written in a very delicate and original vein. She has taken an unbeaten path, but she walks queen of the field in which she labors. She holds the pen of a consummate master, not only of prose, but of the more serious kinds of poetry. This is high praise; but we venture to say that these little books will be read when the author has gone to her rest in the quiet church-yard. They will find their way slowly into the company of standard authors. It is rare that books of a high literary character are written. There are enough full of energy and spirit, but they have not the touch of genius. They are thrown off too rapidly. The taste, the finish, the grace of an accomplished writer, are wanting. But here are all the elements to produce a fine work, and the genius to shape them into creations of living beauty. And the result is what we have said a work which, taking up a thrilling section of actual life, treats of those qualities which are of permanent interest, having the simplicity, the repose, the truthfulness of conscious power. Now, grant that it will be read by few; yet it will be read for its real worth, for its profound interest and instructive moral, and for its power over the mind of a willing reader. And after all, this is very comforting to the writer. To strike the vein of our common nature, and to write what will be studied by a few year after year, is a rich harvest of renown. This, we believe, our author has done.

But we have kept our readers waiting quite long enough at the threshold of these works. What are these books about? What do the" Record of an Obscure Man," the "Tragedy of Errors," the "Tragedy of Success," mean? They are strange titles for their subject. They mislead and confuse you, hence

are not good titles. Yet authors will always have their own way in naming their books; and provided there is something in a name or behind it, readers are not so very captious. You could never guess the subject of these works from their titles. What is it? Do not start with fright. Do not lay the books down in disgust. It is American Slavery; and American Slavery in its most horrible form. Breathe easy now, and read with us these volumes, and believe on our word that they are not a rehash of a worn-out topic, but a fresh, living portraiture of a great national wrong.

They take you to the South. The scene of the tragedy is a southern plantation. The object of the work is to show the influence of slavery upon the whites. But this is not done without picturing domestic and plantation life; beneath all this, you see how the morals of men, the happiness of women, the hopes of the enslaved are gradually taken away; and, in this sense, perhaps, the tragedy is as complete in its delineation of slavery as the more picturesque novels which of late have come from the press, while it impresses plantation-life upon you more distinctly and fervently because of its dramatic form. We decline to give the plot of the drama more than this: to show what is its general form. It is not interesting to read the skeleton of an imaginative work, since, in presenting the mere framework, you lose all that is imaginative except the conception. The plot does not go outside the plantation. Life is represented here among the whites and among the blacks. The interest of the play culminates when Dorcas, a slave, having given birth to a daughter at nearly the same time with the wife of the planter, (too nearly white to be mistaken,) and substituted her own for her mistress's child, at the death-bed of the planter makes known her deceit, and destroys the remaining comfort of a grief-stricken household. Then Helen, the beautiful child of Dorcas, now the accomplished and beloved wife of a neighboring planter, who has not the manhood to own her as his wife when her base birth is known, escapes with her child to the North. She is caught as a fugitive and lodged in jail. Grief and sorrow do their work upon her delicate nature. She is sought out and returned no longer a slave, but a free spirit in a world where there are no slaves. Our author

depicts rather the troubles arising from the old princely spirit among slaves and from the accursed practice of mixing races and enslaving your own kinsmen in the flesh, than the features of slave-life commonly presented to us. She strikes deep and sure at the great curse of slavery; and yet a woman's delicacy holds very much in reserve, while a woman's tact indicates the moral she does not say. In the play, there are the German refugee as tutor, the relations at the North, the Cuban slaveholder, the negro preachers, the leisurely planter, his exquisitely painful wife, and that air of high birth which throws a romantic interest over the whole drama. Then there are the escape, pursuit, and rescue of Helen and her child, through which the reader rushes almost breathless. The curtain closes upon a sad scene; Alice, the sister of Helen's husband, a young woman cherishing a hopeless love, consoling the frantic man beside the corpse of his beautiful wife, and uttering the doom of slavery. The plot is unique, original, unfolding finely, turning this way and that, leaving out nothing essential to completeness, gathering itself up in the last act for the death of the heroine; leaving a sad, tragic impression upon you, as you think over all the rapidly shifting scenes, and how they are enacted in thousands of households to-day.

The faults of the tragedy are few and obvious. The author, in trying to raise her work in dignity, has made the darkies too genteel. They are all graduates of the "Spiegler." It is a fine idealization; but tragedy must not run away from nature. The poets have much license in dealing with gods and men; but is it quite fair to make the poor negroes talk as well as the whites? Besides this, her work is too serious. It would not be so if the comic negro element was introduced even slightly; but it is not. We believe Hamlet has a touch of humorous madness, and that nearly every play of Shakespeare has either a clown or a fool. This drama has neither. The author of the "New Priest" is a great tragic poet, yet his work is full of humor- sad and sweet-without ever descending to comedy. Nor did Shakespeare write a single comedy, though he wrote the "Comedy of Errors," whence, perhaps, the name "Tragedy of Errors." He used the comic element as a foil to the more tragic portions of his plays. So our author sets forth the sad and intensely tragic