The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-04-03 00:00:00

"LOVE."

In the preceding part of this review of " Love," we tested
and compared Knowles with himself. Irrespective of minor
differences of opinion, it is an enviable play that claims a
third place with such choice-productions as " Virginius" and
the " Hunchback." In this honourable struggle for pre-
eminence, Knowles Lis to be regarded as an emulous compe-
titor with self. He is not idly content with having made—
he strives to sustain a reputation as confessedly the most
faithful and devoted playwright of his century. The chances
of dramatic success, compared with those which are open to
competitors in other pursuits of precarious literature, are
now-a-days, as respects " odds" and the chapter of acci-
dents, on a level with riding at steeple-chaces compared with
the expenditure of nerve and muscle on a straightforward
course for the St. Leger. This is worth serious reflection :
it has the closest relation to a curious stage in the history of
those more immediate influences which affect the highest de-
partment of the national literature of every civilized country.
Ycs ! familiar as the association at first may seem, it is ne-
vertheless true. If steeple-chacing be a neck-breaking,
play writing is a heart-breaking pursuit. The race is not
always to the swift, nor success to men of understanding.
In " Love" there are marked borrowings of the author
from himself as identified with his previous writings. But
that, is all but the inevitable badge of fruitful authorship.
What befel Cobbett and Bulwer, especially, as political and
prose compositors, neither Byron nor Sir W. Scott—not
even Shakspere himself, with his well-like, ever-fresh genius
—could wholly escape. All have reproduced pet thoughts
and characteristic phrases in a similar spirit, and often in
nearly the same words ! Yet who but a verbal carper will
say that Knowles has written himself out? The beauties,
which from any page of his " Love" invite quotation, will,
we think, satisfy even the indifferent after rousing them
from an affected or unenviable unconcern. They shall be
select and short—to the purpose—and conclusive. The
pressure of assize intelligence alone deferred their appearance
in the columns of last Friday's STANDARD.

*** The above should have appeared in our impression of
Tuesday ; but, as a dark man says in a play of Shakspere's.
" Who can controut his fate !" so may -not we observe of
our own attesting intentions ? On consideration, therefore,
it has appeared preferable to let the foregoing appear unmo-
dified as set up in type for an " appearance." This, as
our readers are aware, is an assize visitation; and as the
good and commonplace things said and done from under the
imposing thatch of wigs and silk gowns " couldn't keep,"
and as the crumbs which have fallen from a dramatic poet's
mental table can,—we say not " cedant arena," this being a
wind-piping time of peace, in which the talents of the war-
rior cannot be said to yield to those of the gown,—but
Cedat amor togw,
which words, literally translated, signify
Knowles's Love must yield to Cresswell's wig.
There. Like many worthy men, when at a loss, we have
paraphrased a piece of convenient latin, and thereby cut the
matter short under the cover of a classical " allusion."
It were idle to give extracts illustrative of sustained dra-
matic effect from the play of " Love." The characteristics
are necessarily interwoven with dialogue and the collision of
action between the dramatis personce. The play must be
seen to enjoy such traits: there is no other way. What are
appended are submitted as pictures in little. Kindred gems
might be served up so as to exhaust columns. But it is un-
necessary to multiply instances or cloy with sweets. After
speaking of a change which grew with the heroine, " the
nearer she approached to womanhood," we have this on the
dangers of trifling with—

FIRST LOVE.
" You ust not
With a first passion, once it has m
taken root:.play
For it strikes deep—to the foundations even
Of the heart—entwining with the fibres, there,
Of life itself, that pluck the other up. *
So may you tempt her, sir, with pity for him,
To turn a pilgrim—take up staff and scrip.
O never did achievement rival Love's
For daring enterprise and execution.
It will do miracles ; attempt such things
As make ambition, fiery as it is,
Dull plodding tameness in comparison.
Talk of the miser's passion for his store—
'Tis milk and water to the lover's, which
Defies the mines of earth and caves of ocean
To match its treasure ! Talk of height, breadth, depth-
There is no measure for the lover's passion,
"No bounds to what 'twill do !"

Here comes an old friend, no the less welcome because in
a new dress. It reminds one of every dear old aunt's re-
mark, " there are many true words spoken in jest."
------

IRONY.
• " For I have known
Bracelets and rings do miracles, where nature
Play'd niggard, and did nothing or next to it ;
Beat lotions in improving of the skin,
And mend a curve the surgeon had given up
As hopeless.

Sig• Rupert.
Nay you speak in irony.

Catherine.
I speak in truth, speaking in irony;
For irony is but a laughing truth
Told of a worthless thing.
* * * Come
The argument shall be, that you're in love ;
The which shall I affirm while you deny.
You are in love! I'll prove it by fifty things,
And first and foremost, you deny it, sir;
A certain sign, with certain accidents:
I'd stake my credit on one single fact,
A lover is the dullest thing on earth." •

Knowles, of course, means a true lover is. the dullest thing
on earth to the maid of his heart. Such swains look down
when they should look up—mumble when they ought to be
silent, and are loutishly mute when it is the height of con-
ventional rudeness not to say all manner of soft things, and
the greater the nonsense the better. It is otherwise, how-
ever, with lovers of a lady's purse and not her person; or of
a vain one, because of " plunder and place" through her
connexions !

With another sample of a rich lot we must conclude.
It is taken from among a profusion of fine things which a
shrewd half Polonius of an officious and well-meaning old
Baron Steinberg of an intermeddler is made to say, in the
person of (Brick. The thing is a narrative as well as a pic-
ture of the all engrossing theme of

LOVE.
What saidst thou now, apostrophising love ?
ULRICK.—I said it was a wilful, wayward thing,
And so it is—fantastic and perverse !
Which season and occasion set at naught ;
Takes its own way, no matter right or wrong.
It is the bee that finds the honey out,
Where least you'd dream 'twould seek the nectarous store.
And 'tis an arrant masquer—this same love—
That most outlandish, freakish faces wears,
To hide its own !—Looks a proud Spaniard now ;
Now a grave Turk ; hot Ethiopian next ;
And then phlegmatic Englishman ! and then
Gay Frenchman ; by and by Italian or
Gruff Dutchman is LOVE behind the masque !
It is a dissembler too—looks every way
But that where lie its thoughts ! will openly
Frown at the thing it smiles in secret on ;
Looks most like hate, then when it most is love ;
Would fain convince you it is very rock
When it is water ! ice when it is tire !
Is oft its own dupe, like a thorough cheat;
Persuades itself 'tis not the thing it is ;
Holds up its head, purses its brows, and looks
Askant with scornful lip, hugging itself
That it is high disdain—till suddenly
It falls on its knees, making most piteous suit—
With hail of tears and hurricanes of sighs,
Calling on heaven and earth for witnesses
That it is love, true love, nothing but love !
We forget who it is who calls love " fool's paradise."
As this is assize time, we are reminded by the exposure of all
cases of ardent, or rather tried attachment, that, when " dis-
interested" and " ingenuous," they ever shew the tender pas-
sion to work by the rule of contraries ! Thus, men who
in other respects have a reputation for being sensible, make
fools of themselves—especially when they commit themselves
on paper, under the poetic feeling of the distance which
lends enchantment to the view ! Really foolish and weak
people, on the other hand, when in love, evince temporary
sense, or an approach to an escape from imbecility ! Cow-
ards wax valiant; invalids recover; the self-confident become
diffident—of themselves : and so on by " opposites" through
all degrees and kinds of men. Strange, but true. And this
has ever been, since Adam delved and Eve span !

(Continued from the STANDARD of Friday.)
This play, which was noticed on Friday last, has been pre-
sented nightly at the Theatre-Royal since the opening of the
season. After this evening, it is to give place to varied per-
formances, Commencing with another new play, from the pen
of a sentimental and struggling author—Leigh Hunt. Our
present business, however, is neither with the " Legend of
Florence," nor with the ever-interesting Shaksperian As
You Like It, in which Miss Tree will on Thursday personate
Rosalind—but with the brief fulfilment of a promised esti-
mate of Knowles's most recent play of " Love," in respect
of which our position is properly twofold, the nature of the
subject under notice being lyric as well as dramatic.
In addition to one or two errors of the press, there was
one of statement, which is worthy of remark. In taking ex-
ception to the animus under which the daughter quits her
dying father, after receiving and entreating a reiteration
of his " blessing," by an oversight we indicated the part of
the action as the " first scene of the first act." It ought to
have read—end of the " first scene of the third act ;" but as
a description was annexed, the verbal inaccuracy of " first"
instead of " third" was self-rectifying to every interested
reader of ordinary penetration. As the venial error was
ours, and not the printer's, it should be admitted—and there
an end on't.