Litchfield enquirer., 1867-09-12

ship of them is so dramatic, that We could not give the reader any fair idea of their quality without quoting them entire; and our limits will not admit of that. Rosa mond has scene, perhaps equally good, with queen Eleanor, who, her suspicious having been aroused, spies out the hidden abode of her rival She is represented as dwelling in an obscure cottage embowered in trees and shrubbery. Eleanor steals upon her unperceived, while she is singing and playing the lute, and, before making her presence known, overhears .the follow ing song:- 4 ysaassz.z k. 'rrhe ivy hides the rifted tower, The mOsseS gray and old,
 Nor minds the wind, nor needs the shower, Nor shrinks from winters cold;
 The daisy laughs upon the lea
 Through all the dew-damp night And looks the sunbeams in the face With eyes of cheerful light;
 Both love the open air, the sky, And both, imprisOned droop and die. O, let me be the ivy, free
 To vault and climb at will,
 Or daisy with bright eye to sec
 The Sun rise from the hill:
 UnbOlt the doors, throw wide the gales, And let my fevered lip Grow ruddy in the frollc gales, The bubbling fountains sip: Like the wild forest and the sea Let my heart throb with liberty"
 This IS to our sense a most deectable little ':strain of warbled air" In thought, imagery, expression, and all, it is as nearly perfect in its kind, as anything we have lately met with.
 The versifcation of the drama is of very high order, gliding in easy freedom and variety of movement, yet never pass ing into the unrythmical and prosaic. There are no marks of elaboration i'll the structure of the verse, but this is probably because all such marks have been elabora- ted out of it. A right good style,tefdc.ys-r; tieatiaa--iudoin from it's -infrea thing ill poetry. The perfection of the thing con- sists ill keeping up the proper effect of the verbal rythm and poetical elevation, with out making the nearer or reader conscious of that effect. In other forms of poetry, it IS allowable that the reader be, in great CT or less degree, spontaneously sensible of what 1t is that pleases and interests him, and why; but when there is anything of this in drama, the work is so far undram- atic. This is an extremely nice point of art. Even Shakespeare was many years in attaining perfection in it; and whatever measure of excellence in it has been reach ed by other English writers, was doubtless owing to his extreme example and infiu- ence. That MT. Hollister should have got so far advanced on this high road of art, is ! to us not little surprising; for no evi- dence Is before us of his having long prac- tice in the matter. We notice, however, that considerable number of his lines have neither an lamb nor a jSpondae in the second foot; which would probably be marked down as something of defect by 1 the best judges of dramatic versifcation. The thing may not be absolutely inadmis- sible, but 1t ought to occur very rarely, if at all. The play abounds ill solid beauties of versifcation, the following passage be- ing hardly more than an illustration of its average merit in this respect: it is a part of what Beckett says to the King, when the latter offers him the Primacy:- "My culture is in letters, knightly feats, Gaming and hunting, hawking, horsemallship. have fought battles, too, and shed mens blood, At Toulouse, as your majesty doth know,
 And on the borders of fair Normandy, Where, at my cost, kept twelve hundred knights. lack the holy unction of a life
 Spent in meek charities and lowly duties, 1 Savoring of sanctity. My heart is prORd
 My car is tickled with the applause of scholars, And my eye bends to the holding of aplume. love the war cry of Plantagenet
 Better than anthems piercing Gothic roofs And the long wailing of buge note
 Touches me more than silvery bells at vespers,: The laugh of peasant girls, proud ladicss smiles, Are dearer to me than the signs of nuns, Whose hearts keep time to ebon rosaries,
 Pardon me, Sire, dare not take the see." After the Tragedy, the next longest piece in the volume is one entitled "The Phan- tom Ship" its length being about five hun dred and twenty lines It IS plain, straightforward piece of narrative and de. scription, something in the manner of Tennyson's 'Enoch Arden" hardly lnfe- rior to that in tenderness and pathos, though the style is not quite SO severe. The scene of the incidents is laid in New Haven, and in the early days of the Colony; the per sons are the Rev. John Davenport, pastor l of the first Christian flock in New Haven, Anthony Vane and his daughter Esther, and George Davenant. Whether the story or any part of it was borrowed from hlsto- l " or tradition, we know not, as the volume is without preface or note of any kind; but the incidents, especially that from which the piece is named. are strikingly original and peculiar, and are presented with 8 fact-like vividness, so that one can hardly help receiving them as historically true. l Our reading in American poetry has nev- CT lighted on any thing more charming than the Phantom Ship;" and this, too, whether we regard the finished grace and beauty of the parts, or the symmetry and completeness of the whole. The thing is not only poetical in the details, but is in the strictest sense Poem, in which every thing helps on every other thing. and all draw together in perfect harmony of i'm pression; the persons being clearly yet smoothly individualized, while, however, only those points of their characters are presented which immediately touch the authors purpose. It is easy to say fine things, to string together gems of thought and imagery, so as to entertain the fancy as it runs over them, and cheat the reader into false admiration; but the difficulty