he
spectator perpetually, and never let him off until the fall of the
curtain."

The same disagreeable bustle and petty complication of intrigue you may
remark in the author's drama of "Richelieu." "The Lady of Lyons" was a
much simpler and better wrought plot; the incidents following each other
either not too swiftly or startlingly. In "Richelieu," it always seemed
to me as if one heard doors perpetually clapping and banging; one
was puzzled to follow the train of conversation, in the midst of the
perpetual small noises that distracted one right and left.

Nor is the list of characters of "The Sea Captain" to be despised. The
outlines of all of them are good. A mother, for whom one feels a proper
tragic mixture of hatred and pity; a gallant single-hearted son, whom
she disdains, and who conquers her at last by his noble conduct; a
dashing haughty Tybalt of a brother; a wicked poor cousin, a pretty
maid, and a fierce buccaneer. These people might pass three hours very
well on the stage, and interest the audience hugely; but the author
fails in filling up the outlines. His language is absurdly stilted,
frequently careless; the reader or spectator hears a number of loud
speeches, but scarce a dozen lines that seem to belong of nature to the
speakers.

Nothing can be more fulsome or loathsome to my mind than the continual
sham-religious clap-traps which the author has put into the mouth of
his hero; nothing more unsailor-like than his namby-pamby starlit
descriptions, which my ingenious colleague has, I see, alluded to. "Thy
faith my anchor, and thine eyes my haven," cries the gallant captain to
his lady. See how loosely the sentence is constructed, like a thousand
others in the book. The captain is to cast anchor with the girl's faith
in her own eyes; either image might pass by itself, but together, like
the quadrupeds of Kilkenny, they devour each other. The captain tells
his lieutenant to BID HIS BARK VEER ROUND to a point in the harbor. Was
ever such language? My lady gives Sir Maurice a thousand pounds to WAFT
him (her son) to some distant shore. Nonsense, sheer nonsense; and what
is worse, affected nonsense!

Look at the comedy of the poor cousin. "There is a great deal of game on
the estate--partridges, hares, wild-geese, snipes, and plovers (SMACKING
HIS LIPS)--besides a magnificent preserve of sparrows, which I can sell
TO THE LITTLE BLACKGUARDS in the streets at a penny a hundred. But I am
very poor--a very