fairs from the play or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakspeare has no heroes: his scenes are occupied only by men who act and speak as the reader thinks he should have spoken or acted on the same occasion. Even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions, and the most frequent incidents: so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world." Such are the characters of Lopez de Vega. His valets (says an acute writer) speak the language of courtiershis princes of coxcombs, and his ladies of quality that of fishwomen. His actors make their entrance in a mob, and exits in confusion. In one piece probably you have sixty principal characters. When Cervantes expostulated with him upon his unparalleled licentiousness and constant outrages of all the rules of the ancients, Lopez made him the following notable answer an answer unworthy of a man of superior genius and much more analagous to the mean mercenary principles of a huckster or a pedlar, than to the dignity and exalted sentiments of a great poet. " Miguel," said he, "it is the people who pay us, and therefore we ought to please them, which nothing but the grossest ignorance can do. I therefore lock up Aristotle and Horace, because they reproach me for departing from my duty as a dramatic writer, and as for Plautus and Terence I never hold any conversation with them, but they have the impudence to criticise every one of my productions."

Calderon, though not so wild in his genius, was little more attentive than De Vega to the Aristotelian rules. He makes the history of a man's whole life flit through a single play, which, without any regard to regular plan, probability, or indeed possibility, he contrives to spin out through more than half a century of time. Buffoonery as gross as ever disgraced a mountebank's stage at Bartholomew fair, breaks in upon the gravity of the most serious scenes, and interrupts the current of the feelings in some of the most interesting and pathetic; and not infrequently the quaint pleasantries of a valet, or the impertinent jests of some low servant break in upon the plaints of a prince afflicted with the most poignant misery.

Yet with all these defects such is the overbearing power of genius, both De Vega and Calderon so force their way to the heart, the passions, and the feelings, that the most inveterate disciple of the ancient school finds his judgment overcome, and Aristotle himself would be obliged to yield up his authority and prostrate it at the feet of these mighty magicians. His must indeed be a frigid heart which would not be warmed into rapture and enthusiasm by the copiousness, the vigour and the originality of their invention-by their wonderful art in entangling and disentangling their plots, by the boundless variety of characters, by the number, justness, and grandeur of their sentiments, by the force and elegance of their expressions, and by the unexampled facility of their versification: such is the opinion of Barretti, who was no mean judge of the subject and the language. In the style of Calderon, who is the idol of the Spanish theatre, Dibdin allows that there is a nobleness of diction, an elegance without obscurity worthy to be admired, while his artful manner of keeping the spectators in a pleasing yet continual suspense, has a truly ingenious and comic effect.

A few of the Spanish dramatists, however, have approximated nearer to the rules of a regular drama: Solis, Moreto, Zamora, Candamo, Canizares, and some others, deserve great praise for the respectable efforts they have made to introduce a more rational taste. The Spanish theatre has no doubt been improved in some sort since Barretti was in that country: the Autos SACRAMENTALES, a kind of religious drama in which Pagan deities, Christian saints, the Virgin Mary, women, angels, and devils, with a vast variety of allegorical characters, are jumbled together, and the Loa, a small piece of nearly the same kind which preceded the Autos, were performed when Barretti travelled through Spain, but were in a short time after abolished by royal mandate.

It is a matter of very serious as well as curious reflection, the habit which has so much prevailed in Spain of combining Sacred things with the lowest and most ridiculous concerns; and it is one of a multitude of proofs which the history of man affords, how closely the limits of extreme fanaticism and profaneness approach each other. The Spaniards have ever been the most zealous Christian religionists, according to their particular tenets, yet Barretti, who was himself a catholic, remarks that the Spaniards apply religious expressions in a very shocking manner. He says that his inn at Toledo was called Le Sangre de Christo; and adds, "an inn which in any town in England would scarcely be thought a fit habitation for the lowest of mankind, is here called "the blood of Christ."

Besides the plays, Autos, &c. the Spaniards have a kind of farce of one act, or according to their division, of one day, called a Sainé, and a petit piece of two acts called the Zarzuela which admit of music and are often sung throughout. None of their dramatic pieces, it is said, consist of more than three acts, but the lowest of all are called Entremés and Mociganga: these consist of only a few scenes, and their value is estimated by the quantity of buffoonery. Barretti has given in his tour a specimen of one, called the Parish Clerk, which is something like the drollery once practised at the fairs of Great Britain.

But however deficient the dramatic poetry of Spain may be in correctness and excellence, it certainly cannot be accused of being at all deficient in quantity. Nothing that is true can appear more incredible than the immense number of plays produced by Spanish authors. Lopez de Vega composed upwards of two thousand different pieces for the stage. For this prodigious fecundity of Lopez and the Spanish dramatic poets in general, the penetrating and industrious Dibdin accounts in this "When we consider the nature and the form of these works," says he, "the phenomenon is more easy to be conceived. The Spaniards have a great number of rhapsodies, under the titles of chronicles, annals, romances, and legends. In these they find some historical anecdote, some entertaining adventure, which they transcribe without choice or exception. All the details they put into dialogue, and to this compilation is given the distinction, PLAY: thus one can easily imagine that a man in the habit of copying with facility, could write forty of these plays in less time than an author of real genius and regulated habitude could put out of his hands a single act; for the latter is obliged to design his characters, to prepare, graduate, and develop his

intrigue, and to reconcile all this to the rules of decency, taste, probability, and, indeed, custom."

It is curious, continues the same author, that the Spanish plays, which are no more than romances in dialogue, should have been frequently re-transformed into romance. The task cannot be difficult: it is only to render the dialogue again into recital. Le Sage has done this several times in Gil Blas, and this is not the worst part of the work. His history of Aurora de Guzman is translated from a play of MORETO. Nor has Le Sage been the only one who has built a reputation on the plunder of the Spanish dramatists. Madame GOMEZ SCARRON and others have done the same, and it may be fairly averred that most of the novels which had such success in the last century in France, and part of this century in England, are nothing more than Spanish dramas metamorphosed into French and English narrations.

BIOGRAPHY.

We are sorry to be under the necessity of postponing the conclusion of HODGKINSON's life. Hopes had been entertained of its being terminated in the last number; but the protracted absence from Philadelphia of a gentleman who has promised to furnish the biographer with some interesting particulars respecting the death of that admirable actor, prevented the memoir being brought to a close in the last number, and compels us to apologize for the postponement of it in the present.

FOR THE MIRROR.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOHN HANBURY DWYER, COMEDIAN.

MR. DWYER is descended in the direct line from the Milesian family of O'Dwyer, and was born at Tipperary in the kingdom of Ireland, whence he was removed at an early age to Dublin,

for the advantages of education. His father had been a lientenant in the Irish brigades, under the late unfortunate Louis XVI, and at the revolution in which that monarch lost his life he returned to the bosom of his family in his native land. He was acknowledged to be the best fencer of the age, and particularly distinguished himself by an assault with the celebrated Reddau, who challenged any man in Europe, for any sum; but who was publicly beaten by Mr. Dwyer, with the greatest ease.

Mr. J. H. Dwyer was intended by his father for the law; but scribbling on parchment not proving to him so alluring as the perusal of Shakspeare and visiting the theatre, he eloped from the precincts of the bar, and, in spite of the efforts of his friends to the contrary, made his debut at the age of seventeen, for the benefit of Miss Campion (afterwards Mrs. Pope) on the boards of the Theatre Royal, Dublin. His reception at that time seemed to warrant his continuance on the stage, and he employed all his energies to obtain that knowledge of his profession without which the richest gifts of nature are frequently unavailing.

With a degree of success never contemplated even by himself Mr. Dwyer played in many of the principal provincial theatres of England until the year 1802, when, on the first of May, 1802, he appeared in the character of Belcour (West Indian) at Drury Lane. Nothing could be more brilliant than his reception, and no performer ever received so unequivocally the full meed of applause. For several nights together he repeated the same character, and each night added fresh laurels to his fame. The elegance of his person, the fascination of his deportment, and that perfect knowledge of stage-business which never suffers the slightest embarrassment to appear, confirmed him in the public mind as the best comedian that had appeared since the time of Garrick. It is related that the mere manner of drawing his sword elicited several rounds of applause from one of the most crowded houses ever witnessed within the immense walls of the New Theatre.

For three seasons Mr. Dwyer held that distinguished rank in the theatre to which his preeminent talents so fully entitled him. Ranger, Archer, Charles Surface, and other characters of this cast were never represented with greater effect than be