“PUNCH’S” LITERATURE.

  1. “The Hungarian Daughter,” a Dramatic Poem, by George Stephens, 8vo., pp. 294. London: 1841.
  2. “Introductory(!) Preface to the above,” pp. 25.
  3. “Supplement to the above;” consisting of “Opinions of the Press,” on various Works by George Stephens, 8vo., pp. 8.
  4. “Opinions of the Press upon the ‘Dramatic Merits’ and ‘Actable Qualities’ of the Hungarian Daughter,” 8vo., closely printed, pp. 16.

The blind and vulgar prejudice in favour of Shakspeare, Massinger, and the elder dramatic poets—the sickening adulation bestowed upon Sheridan Knowles and Talfourd, among the moderns—and the base, malignant, and selfish partiality of theatrical managers, who insist upon performing those plays only which are adapted to the stage—whose grovelling souls have no sympathy with genius—whose ideas are fixed upon gain, have hitherto smothered those blazing illuminati, George Stephens and his syn—Syncretcis; have hindered their literary effulgence from breaking through the mists hung before the eyes of the public, by a weak, infatuated adherence to paltry Nature, and a silly infatuation in favour of those who copy her.

At length, however, the public blushes (through its representative, the provincial press, and the above-named critical puffs,) with shame—the managers are fast going mad with bitter vexation, for having, to use the words of that elegant pleonasm, the introductory preface, “by a sort of ex officio hallucination,” rejected this and some twenty other exquisite, though unactable dramas! It is a fact, that since the opening of the English Opera House, Mr. Webster has been confined to his room; Macready has suspended every engagement for Drury-lane; and the managers of Covent Garden have gone the atrocious length of engaging sibilants and ammunition from the neighbouring market, to pelt the Syncretics off the stage! Them we leave to their dirty work and their repentance, while we proceed to our “delightful task.”

To prove that the “mantle of the Elizabethan poets seems to have fallen upon Mr. Stephens” (Opinions, p. 11), that the “Hungarian Daughter” is quite as good as Knowles’s best plays (Id. p. 4, in two places), that “it is equal to Goethe” (Id. p. 11), that “in after years the name of Mr. S. will be amongst those which have given light and glory to their country” (Id. p. 10); to prove, in short, the truth of a hundred other laudations collected and printed by this modest author, we shall quote a few passages from his play, and illustrate his genius by pointing out their beauties—an office much needed, particularly by certain dullards, the magazine of whose souls are not combustible enough to take fire at the electric sparks shot forth up out of the depths of George Stephens’s unfathomable genius!

The first gem that sparkles in the play, is where Isabella, the Queen Dowager of Hungary, with a degree of delicacy highly becoming a matron, makes desperate love to Castaldo, an Austrian ambassador. In the midst of her ravings she breaks off, to give such a description of a steeple-chase as Nimrod has never equalled.

ISABELLA (hotly). “Love rides upon a thought,

And stays not dully to inquire the way,

But right o’erleaps the fence unto the goal.”

To appreciate the splendour of this image, the reader must conceive Love booted and spurred, mounted upon a thought, saddled and bridled. He starts. Yo-hoiks! what a pace! He stops not to “inquire the way”—whether he is to take the first turning to the right, or the second to the left—but on, on he rushes, clears the fence cleverly, and wins by a dozen lengths!

What soul, what mastery, what poetical skill is here! We triumphantly put forth this passage as an instance of the sublime art of sinking in poetry not to be matched by Dibdin Pitt or Jacob Jones. Love is sublimed to a jockey, Thought promoted to a race-horse!—“Magnificent!”

But splendid as this is, Mr. Stephens can make the force of bathos go a little further. The passage continues (“a pause” intervening, to allow breathing ime, after the splitting pace with which Love has been riding upon Thought) thus:—

“Are your lips free? A smile will make no noise.

What ignorance! So! Well! I’ll to breakfast straight!”

Again:—

ISABELLA. “Ha! ha! These forms are air—mere counterfeits

Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling

Wainscot and trembling floor!”

The idea of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the floor in an ague, is highly Shakesperesque, and, as the Courier is made to say at page 3 of the Opinions, “is worthy of the best days of that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. Stephens has so successfully studied.”

This well-deserved praise—the success with which the author has studied, in a school, the models of which were human feelings and nature,—we have yet to illustrate from other passages. Mr. Stephens evinces his full acquaintance with Nature by a familiarity with her convulsions: whirlwinds, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and volcanoes—are this gentleman’s playthings. When, for instance, Rupert is going to be gallant to Queen Isabella, she exclaims:—

“Dire lightnings! Scoundrel! Help!”

Martinuzzi conveys a wish for his nobles to laugh—an order for a sort of court cachinnation—in these pretty terms:—

“Blow it about, ye opposite winds of heaven,

Till the loud chorus of derision shake

The world with laughter!”

When he feels uncomfortable at something he is told in the first act, the Cardinal complains thus:—

“Ha! earthquakes quiver in my flesh!”

which the Britannia is so good as to tell us is superior to Byron; while the Morning Herald kindly remarks, that “a more vigorous and expressive line was never penned. In five words it illustrates the fiercest passions of humanity by the direst convulsion of nature:” (Opinions, p. 7) a criticism which illustrates the fiercest throes of nonsense, by the direst convulsions of ignorance.

Castaldo, being anxious to murder the Cardinal with, we suppose, all “means and appliances to boot,” asks of heaven a trifling favour:—

“Heaven, that look’st on,

Rain thy broad deluge first! All-teeming earth

Disgorge thy poisons, till the attainted air

Offend the sense! Thou, miscreative hell,

Let loose calamity!”

But it is not only in the “sublime and beautiful that Mr. Stephens’s genius delights” (vide Opinions, p. 4); his play exhibits sentiments of high morality, quite worthy of the “Editor of the Church of England Quarterly Review,” the author of “Lay Sermons,” and other religious works. For example: the lady-killer, Castaldo, is “hotly” loved by the queen-mother, while he prefers the queen-daughter. The last and Castaldo are together. The dowager overhears their billing and cooing, and thus, with great moderation, sends her supposed daughter to ——. But the author shall speak for himself:—

“Ye viprous twain!

Swift whirlwinds snatch ye both to fire as endless

And infinite as hell! May it embrace ye!

And burn—burn limbs and sinews, souls, until

It wither ye both up—both—in its arms!”

Elegant denunciation!—“viprous,” “hell,” “sinews and souls.” Has Goethe ever written anything like this? Certainly not. Therefore the “Monthly” is right at p. 11 of the Opinions. Stephens must be equal, if not superior, to the author of “Faust.”

One more specimen of delicate sentiment from the lips of a virgin concerning the lips of her lover, will fully establish the Syncretic code of moral taste:—

CZERINA (faintly). “Do breathe heat into me:

Lay thy warm breath unto my bloodless lips:

I stagger; I—I must—”

CASTALDO. “In mercy, what?”

CZERINA. “Wed!!!”

The lady ends, most maidenly, by fainting in her lover’s arms.

A higher flight is elsewhere taken. Isabella urges Castaldo to murder Martinuzzi, in a sentence that has a powerful effect upon the feelings, for it makes us shudder as we copy it—it will cause even our readers to tremble when they see it. The idea of using blasphemy as an instrument for shocking the minds of an audience, is as original as it is worthy of the sort of genius Mr. Stephens possesses. Alluding to a poniard, Isabella says:—

“Sheath it where God and nature prompt your hand!”

That is to say, in the breast of a cardinal!!

The vulgar, who set up the common-place standards of nature, probability, moral propriety, and respect for such sacred names as they are careful never to utter, except with reverence, will perhaps condemn Mr. Stephens (the aforesaid “Editor of the Church of England Quarterly Review,” and author of other religious works) with unmitigated severity. They must not be too hasty. Mr. Stephens is a genius, and cannot, therefore, be held accountable for the meaning of his ravings, be they even blasphemous; more than that he is a Syncretic genius, and his associates, by the designation they have chosen, by the terms of their agreement, are bound to cry each other up—to defend one another from the virulent attacks of common sense and plain reason. They are sworn to stick together, like the bundle of rods in Æsop’s fable.

SYNCRETISM.

Mr. Stephens, their chief, the god of their idolatry, is, consequently, more mad, or, according to their creed, a greater genius, than the rest; and evidently writes passages he would shudder to pen, if he knew the meaning of them. Upon paper, therefore, the Syncretics are not accountable beings; and when condemned to the severest penalties of critical law, must be reprieved on the plea of literary insanity.

It may be said that we have descended to mere detail to illustrate Mr. Stephens’ peculiar genius—that we ought to treat of the grand design, or plot of the Hungarian Daughter; but we must confess, with the deepest humility, that our abilities are unequal to the task. The fable soars far beyond the utmost flights of our poor conjectures, of our limited comprehension. We know that at the end there are—one case of poisoning, one ditto of stabbing with intent, &c., and one ditto of sudden death. Hence we conclude that the play is a tragedy; but one which “cannot be intended for an acting play” (preliminary preface, p.1,)—of course as a tragedy; yet so universal is the author’s genius, that an adaptation of the Hungarian Daughter, as a broad comedy, has been produced at the “Dramatic Authors’ Theatre,” having been received with roars of laughter!

The books before us have been expensively got up. In the Hungarian Daughter, “rivers of type flow through meadows of margin,” to the length of nearly three hundred pages. Mr. Stephens is truly a most spirited printer and publisher of his own works.

But the lavish outlay he must have incurred to obtain such a number of favourable notices—so many columns of superlative praise—shows him to be, in every sense—like the prince of puffers, George Robins—“utterly regardless of expense.” The works third and fourth upon our list, doubtless cost, for the copyright alone, in ready money, a fortune. It is astonishing what pecuniary sacrifices genius will make, when it purloins the trumpet of Fame to puff itself into temporary notoriety.