Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/236

. DRAMATIC WRITING.

BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASIETRO.

A maw may be an excellent poet, yet he is unable to write dramatic poetry. Many qualifications are required for that type of composition, which may be dispensed with in others. To imagination must be added experience; that intuitive knowledge of the heart, natural to a true person, must have been confirmed by the actual knowledge of life; and the power over language must be every day reinforced by an enlargement of the faculties on which language is itself created. We speak not here of the greater intensity of thought and feeling ne-cessary, when they are intended to inspire, not merely the poet's own heart with stronger pastime, but to give unreal forms the likeness of the kingly crown of fife. ‘ This is a question of degree and refers to the natural constitution of the poet’s mind.

The qualifications of which we have spoken as peculiarly needful to the dramatic writer must be superseded by those of his natural genius, however great and vated. Nature forbids one faculty of the mind to surpass that of another. ‘To imagine well and rapidly, one must never atone for the want of nice discrimination, and then, since knowledge, experience, profound judgment, and even a minute of acquaintance with the human world are necessary, those powers of mind that are necessary to their acquisition must be kept in constant exercise. But it so happens that the poetical temperament is, in itself, unfavorable to their development, and it is equally easy that the two chisves of endowments are rarely bound together.

Hence it is that the appearance of dramatic genius is such an unfrequent occurrence and that those who possess it may fairly be regarded as the most perfectly constituted of bumun beings. In proportion to their excellency, all the powers of their mind, together with the whole system of their passions and sympathies, are beautifully balanced. With other poets, a plan of composition seems discoverable. They almost appear to have recognisable imagination and deep feeling, in the lien of clear sense and judgment. 'Though the world, in its common place hook, has a well-known note of this subject, but nothing of the kind holds good with dramatic writers. ‘Whatever shall be found in human nature, in its least state, and matured by wisdom and extensive knowledge, must be found in them, or they fail in the very end and purpose of their office.

One of the chief circumstances that separates the literary men of ages like our own from those of the grander period is derived from the distinction here alluded to: ‘The nobile spirits of old were bent on being gront, from the belief in that fincst of philosophical themes, that greamewm is a romething, and not a mere quality of relation. In that day, a notion of this kind could scarcely be made intelligible to the world, and literary men partaking in the general error, it is very seldom a hook to present a sufficient sign of merit—that is, of pure intellectual foree—to call for a consideration of more than its comparative worth. When the extreme difficulty of dramatic poetry is taken into account, examples of striking excellence in this class will still be more rarely looked for, and our sentences will generally be founded on the formula—*this is better" or «this is even worse” than what we usually meet with.  THE PET FAWN.

I saw her, when a joyous girl, ‘A sunny, laughing thing, Acrose whose young May mora of fife Time ne'er had spread his wing. Reside a lovely fawn she stood, Her bright eye shone with mirth, And both so beautiful and fair Scomed more of heaven than earth,

We met, when on her brow wae set The mark of riper years, ra And she was ali the woman then, A queen among her peers, And gay and musical her laugh Her footstep still and light, And oh! her glance was yet'as pure Av in her childhood bright.

I saw thet form, that glance no more, But friends my footsteps led To-where the green grass lightly waved Above her lowly bed, And then my fancy painted her In childhood’s early hour, So pure, and gay, and innocent Within that verdant bower! H. TO FRIENDSHIP.

DEDICATED TO———

BY ANDREW MC.MACKIN.

In sacred Friendship’s name my pen essays To marshal np the scenes of other years, And back from Memory's bourne, of smiles.and tears, To win a mirror-wave, in which to gaze On boyhood’s hopes and plane: Youth's sunlight rays That gild the young horizon of the soul, And pave the halcyon way to manhood’s goal With elar-lit nights and bright aud glorious days Friendship, at least with TH2x, was not a flow'r To bloom and fade within tho passing day, Or live but in the tribute wealth can pay To lave and virtue; a more genial pow'r Hath kept perennial on its torrent spray Thy Friendship’s bloom, that ne'er shall pass away.

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