er
more will they move across the stage. Scholars read them, and often with
delight, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a strange spirit, and has
begotten strange children on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet
it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at once divine, human, and
brutal, of the incomprehensible monsters--to scan their forms, powerful
though misshapen--to watch their movements, vigorous though
distorted--and to hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing them not
seldom discourse most excellent music. But we should shudder to see them
on the stage enacting the parts of men and women--and call for the
manager. All has been done for the least deformed of the tragedies of
the Old English Drama that humanity could do, enlightened by the
Christian religion; but nature has risen up to vindicate herself against
such misrepresentations as they afford; and sometimes finds it all she
can do to stomach Shakespeare.

But the monstrosities we have mentioned are not the worst to be found in
the Old English Drama. Others there are that, till civilised Christendom
fall back into barbarous Heathendom, must for ever be unendurable to
human ears, whether long or short--we mean the obscenities. That sin is
banished for ever from our literature. The poet who might dare to commit
it, would be immediately hooted out of society, and sent to roost in
barns among the owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed with
ineffable pollutions; and full of passages that the street-walker would
be ashamed to read in the stews. We have not seen that volume of the
Family Dramatists which contains Massinger. But if made fit for female
reading, his plays must be mutilated and mangled out of all likeness to
the original wholes. To free them even from the grossest impurities,
without destroying their very life, is impossible; and it would be far
better to make a selection of fine passages, after the manner of Lamb's
Specimens--but with a severer eye--than to attempt in vain to preserve
their character as plays, and at the same time to expunge all that is
too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerous to boys and virgins. Full-grown
men may read what they choose--perhaps without suffering from it; but
the modesty of the young clear eye must not be profaned--and we cannot,
for our own part, imagine a _Family_ Old English Dramatist.

And here again bursts upon us the glory of the Greek Drama. The
Athenians were as wicked, as licentious, as pol