e she often entertained
Scott and other great people, and where she lived till 23rd February
1851. In 1798 she published the first of a series of _Plays on the
Passions_, in which the eighteenth century theory of the ruling passion
was carried out to the uncompromising and even whimsical extent of
supplying a brace of dramas, a tragedy and a comedy, on each of the
stronger passions, Hatred, Fear, Love, etc. The first volume, which
opened with the rather striking closet drama of _Basil_, sometimes
spoken of as _Count Basil_, was prefaced by an introductory discourse of
considerable ability. The book, coming at a dead season of literature,
was well received. It reached its third edition in the second year from
its appearance, and one of its plays, _De Montfort_, was acted, with
Kemble in the title part, not without success. A second volume followed
in 1802, and a third in 1812. In 1804 one of _Miscellaneous Plays_ had
been issued, while others and some poems were added later. Joanna's
plays in general, it was admitted, would not act (though the Ettrick
Shepherd in the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ denies this), and it requires some
effort to read them. The blank verse of the tragedies, though
respectable, is uninspired; the local and historical colour, whether of
Byzantine, Saxon, or Renaissance times, is of that fatal "property"
character which has been noticed in the novel before Scott; and the
passion-scheme is obviously inartistic. The comedies are sometimes
genuinely funny; but they do not display either the direct and fresh
observation of manners, or the genial creation of character, which alone
can make comedy last. In short Miss Baillie was fortunate in the moment
of her appearance, but she cannot be called either a great dramatist or
a good one.

The school of Artificial Tragedy--the phrase, though not a consecrated
one, is as legitimate as that of artificial comedy--which sprung up soon
after the beginning of this century, and which continued during its
first half or thereabouts, if not later, is a curious phenomenon in
English history, and has hardly yet received the attention it deserves.
The tragedy of the eighteenth century is almost beneath contempt, being
for the most part pale French echo or else transpontine melodrama, with
a few plaster-cast attempts to reproduce an entirely misunderstood
Shakespeare. It was impossible that the Romantic movement in itself, and
the study of the Elizabethan drama which it induced,