e operation of his genius; art had at
length become a second nature. A new proof at once of his fertility,
and of his solicitude for farther improvement, appeared in 1803. The
_Braut von Messina_ was an experiment; an attempt to exhibit a modern
subject and modern sentiments in an antique garb. The principle on
which the interest of this play rests is the Fatalism of the ancients:
the plot is of extreme simplicity; a Chorus also is introduced, an
elaborate discussion of the nature and uses of that accompaniment
being prefixed by way of preface. The experiment was not successful:
with a multitude of individual beauties this _Bride of Messina_ is
found to be ineffectual as a whole: it does not move us; the great
object of every tragedy is not attained. The Chorus, which Schiller,
swerving from the Greek models, has divided into two contending parts,
and made to enter and depart with the principals to whom they are
attached, has in his hands become the medium of conveying many
beautiful effusions of poetry; but it retards the progress of the
plot; it dissipates and diffuses our sympathies; the interest we
should take in the fate and prospects of Manuel and Caesar, is
expended on the fate and prospects of man. For beautiful and touching
delineations of life; for pensive and pathetic reflections,
sentiments, and images, conveyed in language simple but nervous and
emphatic, this tragedy stands high in the rank of modern compositions.
There is in it a breath of young tenderness and ardour, mingled
impressively with the feelings of gray-haired experience, whose
recollections are darkened with melancholy, whose very hopes are
chequered and solemn. The implacable Destiny which consigns the
brothers to mutual enmity and mutual destruction, for the guilt of a
past generation, involving a Mother and a Sister in their ruin,
spreads a sombre hue over all the poem; we are not unmoved by the
characters of the hostile Brothers, and we pity the hapless and
amiable Beatrice, the victim of their feud. Still there is too little
action in the play; the incidents are too abundantly diluted with
reflection; the interest pauses, flags, and fails to produce its full
effect. For its specimens of lyrical poetry, tender, affecting,
sometimes exquisitely beautiful, the _Bride of Messina_ will long
deserve a careful perusal; but as exemplifying a new form of the
drama, it has found no imitators, and is likely to find none.

The slight degree of fai