Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/692
There was a still better model to be found,—the model from which the writers of that very drama constructed their everlasting works,—nature.—If Mr Milman had studied nature as closely as he has the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth, he might have gone nigh to produce a work that should be to the nineteenth century what their's were to the sixteenth and seventeenth; but, as it is, Fazio has the antiquated dress of the one,—the stiff and constrained manners of the other,—a body made up from something of each,—and the soul of neither.
There is a perpetual appearance of effort in this tragedy. The writer's poetry does not "ooze" from him as a gum," but is distilled, drop by drop, from the alembic of art. He moves gracefully, we admit; but he moves in fetters. In common life the endeavour to be graceful, even if it succeed, always gives a tinge of affectation: and it does so in Fazio. We are never sure that the author is what he seems, or means what he says. In one word, he writes like an author.
To come to particulars, Bianca, the character which the author has laboured more than any other, is, perhaps for that very reason, the least of all to our taste. Mr Milman endeavours to interest us in her favour, and yet he draws her with the two most fatal mental deformities that can befal a woman and a wife—selfishness and want of confidence. She loves Fazio, not because he deserves to be loved—not because he is Fazio, but because he is her Fazio. After two years of undoubted and undoubting constancy and affection, when he but speaks of another woman, she suspects and threatens;—she but conjectures that he is untrue to her, and instantly denounces him to justice, for crimes of which he was not guilty; she contemplates the murder of her own children, lest, when she dies, she should miss them in heaven,—as if so violent and unfeminine a lady could find heaven any where!—The character is drawn with considerable force and consistency; and we dare not say that it is an unnatural one: but we are sure that it is most unamiable. We mention this, because the author seems to think otherwise; and makes the whole interest of the piece depend on her.—But he does not, we suppose, call this a part of his "attempt at reviving our old national drama." Where will he find any hints at such traits of character among the females of that drama? We mean among those who are intended to be amiable.—Is it in the divine Juliana, in the Double Marriage; or the divinely-human Aspatia, in the Maid's Tragedy? Is it in Desdemona—the abused and injured, yet gentle, and obedient, and loving Desdemona?—She whose only answer to suspicion and outrage, is a renewed vow of love to the man who has inflicted them on on her, even "though he should cast me off to beggarly divorcement;" and whose only return for a guiltless death at his hands, is expending her last breath in a wilful and deliberate falsehood to shield him from obloquy?—Is it in the quiet but deep-hearted Ophelia; or the gently-heroical Imogen?—This "attempt at reviving our old national drama," was an unfortunate passage in Mr Milman's preface.
The character of Fazio is, with all its faults, more pleasing, and we hope more natural, than that of Bianca. His silent and deep repentance—his uncomplaining resignation—and above all, his unupbraiding affection towards his wife, after the condemnation which she has brought upon him, almost make amends for his crimes. He utters no word of recrimination; but his first greeting, after her accusal of him, is, "my own Bianca!"—this is using "my own," in the true and beautiful sense of the words. How different from the meaning which she attaches to them in her peevish and passionate exclamations, when she but suspects that he has injured her! "My Fazio"—"mine own—mine only—not Aldabella's."
At present we have not room for further remarks on particular parts of this Tragedy, except to say that all that is seen and heard of the short character of Bartolo seems to us to be totally unnatural and bad.—
On reading what we have written, we find that, by having been forced, against our will, to compare Fazio with works of such transcendent beauty in the same class, we have not conveyed any thing like so favourable an impression of it, or its author's talents, as we feel.