Southern Quarterly Review Volume 6 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: article; also, in relation to the neglect of the commentators upon Milton, generally, in their editions, in omitting, to a considerable extent, reference to passages from modern writings of various kinds, in which the evidences of Milton's use of those works are fully as strong as, if not stronger in many instances than, those of his imitations from the ancient and modern classics; but, for all which might be said on the first head, we refer the reader to Johnson's Rambler, No. 143, on the Criterions of Plagiarism; and to Thomasius de plagio lilerario: and on the second, we commend to perusal the critical remarks upon Prendeville's Milton, in Black- wood, the last upon the list of our references. Art. III.?Les Burgraves; Trilogie. Par Victor Hugo. According to Victor Hugo's predictions, with the Revolution of 1830 commenced a glorious era for dramatic poetry. The words of strife, "classic" and'"romantic," were swallowed up in the abyss of that year, as the epithets "Gluckist" and "Piccinist"' in the gulf of 1789. Art remained, alone and firmly based; the theatre conquered its liberty in the struggle for political freedom; and pieces which the censor, at the Restoration, had buried alive, burst their cerements and came forth, scattering themselves over all the theatres of Paris, amid the delighted applause of the people. The spirit of renovation and reformation, which had been at work in history, poetry, philosophy, then made itself felt in the drama. Art was free; a vast step had been taken from the past to the present age; the-drama possessed a power it had never wielded, or even dreamed of, before; what was once only a fresco painted on a dead wall, became a living and thrilling representation of passion, of soul, ?in a word, of humanity. Our author, enraptured with t...