BRIAN BORU.* THE author of this tragedy tells us that

it is "a first and tenta- tive effort," "composed at various intervals during the past three years, amid the pressure of other engagements." That being so, it is undoubtedly a work of high promise. There is a depth of feeling, simplicity, and nervous force in many of the critical passages, and a reticence and self-restraint throughout, which would not have suggested a first effort. On the other hand, though there are one or two passages in which a redundancy of mixed metaphor would have suggested a young writer, there is, on the whole, almost a deficiency of imaginative excursiveness and discursiveness, such as we should by no means have expected in a first attempt. Of course, a tragedy can hardly be written without some delineation of evil in it, but here the picture of the two or three evil characters is bare almost to barrenness. Even the Queen, who is the real evil genius of the play, and is sketched with a certain force, so that one feels the grandeur of her reckless ambition, is not painted with anything like the care due to the part she has to play. One can hardly say of her what her relation to her husband is. That she admires his genius and courage, and hopes to rise by her own skill in misguiding him, to the highest point her ambition can covet, is clear enough. But whether in any sense she ever loved him, whether she had any compunction in tempt- ing him to a base use of his great position, whether her vindictiveness, when she turns against him, is mingled with any of the bitterness of wounded love,—in short, what were her excuses to herself for her wicked plot, whether she really plotted for her son first, and for herself only in the second place, or whether she needed no excuses at all,—all this is left uncertain, Kormloda remains, in spite of a certain dignity and grandeur, a vague and half-finished picture. Her death is described with one of the touches that seems to us to indicate a vein of true power in our author :—

"Brian.— What form is that ?

Archbishop (uncovering the face).—It is the Queen, Brian.— Oh, too familiar face ! How chanced it thus ?

Archbishop.— She in the Danish rear Stood all impatiently to view the fight, That, like a battle raging in her breast, Uncertain, rose and fell. When all was lost, And Danish fugitives went trooping by, She with a cry of rage and wild despair Met our pursuit, and soon a random spear Struck her to earth, but still her flame of life Burnt lurid to its close. With face hard set And breast all panting, she in death's despite Cried, 'I am Queen ! and though I yield to fate, I scorn the coward fear.' Her son's name then She murmured low, and died.

Brian.— Then she is dead ?

Archbishop.—Yes, King, quite dead ; no faintest ebb of lifo

Stirs the still heart ; the stedfast-gazing eyes, Those windows of the soul, are open wide, But look on other worlds ; and all the face Set to the conflict seems defiant still, As if the great surrender had bmn made

With undefeated conrage,—to a foe r

The simplicity and force of that last expression, describing the gaze of the dead Queen, fixed just as if her bodily eyes had seen

in death the spiritual agencies which she had treated and regarded as those of a foe, is very dramatic and vigorous. Nevertheless,

the interior of her character is not made clear to us. The sketch of her is but half drawn.

• This is still more the case with her son and tool, Tiege. That Kormloda clearly discerns the poorness and sluggishness of this son's nature is obvious. Whether, in spite of this, she greatly loves him, and is steeping herself in crime chiefly to raise him to power, the reader is left in ignorance. Even for a side-sketch, Tiege is too bare. His is just the kind of character which an experienced dramatist would have covered with a certain drapery of either passion or poetry, in order to avoid leaving an important (even though only second-rate) figure so naked of all true interest, so in- significant as well as so mean, as Tiege is left in this play. If he be intended to be the mainspring of his mother's crime, there should have been far more expression of her passionate devotion to one so unworthy of it, but who for that very reason might perhaps excite only the more of it in a mother's heart. But this is left to the reader's conjecture. As far as the play exhibits her, Kormloda

* Brian Bore: a Tragedy. By J. T. B. London: Longrnana and Co.

appears to have a greater ambition for herself than for her son, were it not that her son's name is said to be the last upon her lips. But if Tiege be not the chief object of his mother's ambi- tious plans, but only one of her chief tools, there is still more need for some independent interest in the character itself, whether interest of situation, or interest of personal character, to redeem it from its present almost sordid insignificance.

However, these are but the secondary characters of the poem. Its chief interest is in the attempt to paint the hero-king, Brian Born himself,—his noble ambition for his country, his impatient and hot resentment against those who hinder his plans, his accessibility to evil influence under the grand disguise of dis- interested patriotic motives, his remorse and his superstition after- he has acquiesced in the 'commission of a great crime, the success- ful struggle of his conscience to make compensation to his country for the stain upon his own soul, and the final blending of just pride and juster humiliation. And it is because there is in this sketch something really stately and powerful, that we recognise so much promise in this "first attempt" of an unknown author.

The early scenes—the scenes of temptation—are not the most effective. The author gives us a better insight into his hero in the later scenes than in the earlier. Brian Born is made too much of the pure patriot, too little of the fierce and resentful chief, in the scene in which he succumbs to Kormloda's arts, than is really natural. Afterwards, in accounting for his own fall, he tells us more clearly what had really undermined his virtue,—that he had consciously yielded to a bad kind of personal charm in his marriage with Kormloda, before he yielded to the criminal temptations with which she plied him ; but in the earlier scenes, the triumph of temptation is almost unnaturally sudden. He seems to be fully master of himself one moment,—to see-with per- fect vision, and indignantly to repudiate, the evil he is asked to commit,—and the next, to collapse without any explanation. But the sin once sinned,—his neutrality in relation to the intended murder once obtained,—the delineation of his vain struggles to make atonement without any confession that would involve his own humiliation, and the real check which this endeavour places on his personal ambition, is finely drawn. Still finer is the picture of the end, when the guilt is confessed, and the King sees in the succession of his son to the crown of Ireland the pro- spect of a purer reign, at the moment when he himself is passing into the world where royalty is an advantage only so far as it is indifferent to all those outward circumstances on which human royalty most eagerly feeds :—

"Securely now, my son, The crown descends to you.

Morrough.— And I will live For Ireland. [Turning to Ethnie..

And for Ethnic> !

Brian.— Morrough,—say, There is no cloud between our spirits now ? Morrough.—None, father, none ! Brian.—'Tis well! Give me your hand, My eyes are dim, and I go—groping on,— Into the great—great—darkness! Archbishop.— There is light Beyond the darkness—

Brian (suddenly ).—Come, unbuckle here, And take my armour off,—my wars are done ! I am no more a King, but only Brian,— A subject now, that at the palace-gate Doth wait his Monarch's will !

Alacha.— He'll cry, Well done ! Brian.—Is it well done ? Something well done for Ireland,.

In Council and in field ? [Brian's breastplate is taken of. Bear witness friends, My wounds are all in front, and my man's breast Is like an ancient target ; full of scars, Of honourable scars. But—count they there ?

[Brian raises his hand and points upward. Morrough.—Father, all noble deeds must needs count there ;.

But Heaven's wide mercy counts for more than all.

Ethnie.—And death itself is but a little pang

Unto the loving soul ; for love is safe, And souls are safe through lovel

Brian.— Oh, gentle heart

Oh, loving &tighter ! [To Morrough. Morrough, take your bride

[Iforrough and Ethnie join hands..

Warriors of Ireland! hail your King and Queen!

[The chiefs and soldiers pay homage to Morrough and Ethnie, and raise the royal shout. There's music in that sound ! Now raise me up,

And let me speak again before I go.

I feel a breath of inspiration strong Upon my soul, and thus I prophesy !

[All gather round, intent on Brian's words.. In the fair times to come, a noble Prince,

Heir to the throne of all these Western Isles [Chiefs raise Brian.

(Then set like shining jewels in one crown) Shall win a Danish maiden for his bride ; A sea-king's daughter she, as fair, RR pure, As happy then, as thou. All peacefully, And with a mighty welcome she shall come ; And as her feet shall touch these Island shores In innocence and beauty, softly then,

But surely and for ever she shall lay Her fair white hand upon the Nation's heart,

And pluck at will the sweet unfolding flowers Of loyalty and love, that in her smile Shall all perennial bloom. Her sons shall be Renowned Kings in that great after-time, With sceptres waving over half the world!

[Then—with frame and rake convulsed in the agony of death. Now set me free. I have loved Ireland well, And to the last ! But all is over now, For I am going on the mighty quest Of judgment—and of Mercy !"

We do not admire the taste of the passage in the preceding extract, in which "3. T. B." has emulated Shakespeare's great compli- ment to Queen Elizabeth,—the prophecy put into the mouth of Cranmer, in his play of Henry VM.,—by his compliment to the Prince of Wales. The occasion of it is the engagement of Brian Bore's son to Ethnie, a girl of Danish descent, but it is unfortu- nately not a prophecy which can have much power to fulfil itself, or we would withdraw our objection ; and for the rest, these flat- tering poetic tributes to princes, at all events to princes who have had no opportunity of showing any special capacity for rule, are hardly worthy of a poet. If we take no account, however, of this rather objectionable and forced bit of homage to the Court, this scene is a fine one, and the two passages in which the dying King expresses his feeling in the presence of death are noble :—

" I am no more a King, but only Brian,— A subject now, that at the palace-gate Doth wait his Monarch's will."

And again :—

"But all is over now, For I am going on the mighty quest Of judgment,—and of mercy."

These lines have a simplicity, almost a grandeur, which seem to us to indicate a genuine dramatist in germ.

If there had been a little more profusion of metaphor, a little more wealth of imagination, more that needed the pruning-knife, than there is, we might have looked with even more hope than we do,—and we look with much,—to the future of a poet who could write this play. There is almost too much reticence and simplicity in it for a first attempt. We would rather see such a writer fail on the side of excess of fancy, than on that of defect. Still it is somewhat carping to complain of any poet that faults are absent from his work, which, if they had been there, might, though faults, have been omens of something better in future. And there is so much that is pure, and stately, and dramatic in the tragedy, that we cannot but hope much from its (to us) entirely unknown author. Who "3. T. B." may be, we have not the smallest suspicion. But a " first attempt" like Brian Boru may reasonably encourage a hope for something of considerable dramatic power later in life, as the author's mind and character mature, and supply him with richer materials for the creation of great situations and great careers.