Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/150

134 interest. Agreeable as his company is, and much as we respect his manly worth, we have all along a grovelling suspicion that he is partly unreal, and not enough of the "old soldier" for one of his experience among the French Kriegesvolk and rascally German innkeepers. Minna—like most of Lessing's demoiselles—is a frank, attractive maiden, just fit to be what she is, the delight of her countrymen; with a tripping tongue in her head, and a warm heart in her breast:Meniel contends that Lessing comes next to Shakspeare in his conceptions of womanly nature—its graceful tenderness, its noble simplicity, its hallowed purity, its radiant cheerfulness. The subordinate parts in this comedy are also characteristically worked up: Paul Werner, the honest and attached Wachtmeisier; the greedy Wirth, under whose roof no good soul could say, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" the French chevalier d'industrie, Riccaut, with his national egoïsme and his hybrid dialect; and the soubrette, Franciska, as ready to woo and win on her own account as to smooth matters for her lady's suitor—a handy, hearty Frauenzimmerchen, whose ringing, cheery laugh must infallibly have gladdened Master Paul's roof-tree.

But to those who consider that Lessing was greatest in tragedy, "Emilia Galotti" stands facile princeps. In dignity and sustained power, in plot and dialogue, in character and action, it is far in advance of "Miss Sara Sampson." The prince, Hector Gonzaga, weakly wicked, and his supple Achithophel, the Marquis Marinelli, a systematic villain, with a smiling cheek, are ably contrasted. Emilia is a Christian Virginia. Her sire, Odoardo Galotti, is a vigorous and affecting portrait—manly and noble, but addicted to indulgence in "a word and a blow" more than is healthy for himself and others; never without a certain grimness of aspect and ruggedness of speech, that deters us from classing him with the "heavy fathers" of the universal drama: for an elderly hero, charged with dagger and poison, and, while awaiting his quarry in the next room, soothing himself with an "Easy, old boy! easy!" ("Ruhig, alter Knabe! ruhig!") is, to say the least, an awkward customer. His wife, Claudia, is a good motherly soul, who can love fervently at all times, and can scream well on an emergency; she says some cordial, telling things, too, in the course of her rôle—as where that atrocious Marinelli remonstrates with her for shrieking so rudely in the prince's apartments, while her child is in durance of the vilest, and she reminds him that a lioness, robbed of her whelps, is not particular in whose forest she roars. The Countess Orsina, again, is full of individuality and distorted strength; playing a terribly impressive part in