THE MODERN DRAMA.
109
In Germany these questions have already been fairly weighed, and those who read the sketches of her great actors, as given by Tieck, know that there, at least, they took with the best minds of their age and country their proper place.
And who, that reads Joanna Baillie's address to Mrs. Siddons, but feels that the fate, which placed his birth in another age from her, has robbed him of full sense of a kind of greatness whose absence none other can entirely supply.
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| The impassioned changes of thy beauteous face, |
| Thy arms impetuous tost, thy robe's wide flow, |
| And the dark tempest gathered on thy brow, |
| What time thy flashing eye and lip of scorn |
| Down to the dust thy mimic foes have borne; |
| Remorseful musings sunk to deep dejection, |
| The fixed and yearning looks of strong affection; |
| Arithmetic cannot number, and whose lordships |
| A falcon in one day cannot fly over; |
| Yet he so sordid in his mind, so griping |
| As not to afford himself the necessaries |
| To maintain life, if a patrician, |
| (Though honored with a consulship) find himself |
| Touched to the quick in this,—We cannot help it. |
| Or, when we show a judge that is corrupt, |
| And will give up his sentence, as he favors |
| The person, not the cause; saving the guilty |
| If of his faction, and as oft condemning |
| The innocent, out of particular spleen; |
| If any in this reverend assembly, |
| Nay, even yourself, my lord, that are the image |
| Of absent Caesar, feel something in your bosom |
| That puts you in remembrance of things past, |
| Or things intended,—’Tis not in us to help it. |
| I have said, my lord, and now, as you find cause, |
| Or censure us, or free us with applause. |
