Alaham, Mustapha.—­The two tragedies of Lord Brooke, printed among his poems, might with more propriety have been termed political treatises than plays.  Their author has strangely contrived to make passion, character, and interest, of the highest order, subservient to the expression of state dogmas and mysteries.  He is in nine parts Machiavel and Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca.  In this writer’s estimate of the powers of the mind, the understanding must have held a most tyrannical preeminence.  Whether we look into his plays or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect.  The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches of Caelica and Camena.  Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many sweet images of female excellence all women are in an especial manner bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character higher than Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done.  But it requires a study equivalent to the learning of a new language to understand their meaning when they speak.  It is indeed hard to hit: 

  “Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
  Or seven though one should musing sit.”

It is as if a being of pure intellect should take upon him to express the emotions of our sensitive natures.  There would be all knowledge, but sympathetic expressions would be wanting.

* * * * *

BEN JONSON.

The Case is Altered.—­The passion for wealth has worn out much of its grossness in tract of time.  Our ancestors certainly conceived of money as able to confer a distinct gratification in itself, not considered simply as a symbol of wealth.  The old poets, when they introduce a miser, make him address his gold as his mistress; as something to be seen, felt, and hugged; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at least.  The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a Platonic affection in comparison with the seeing, touching, and handling pleasures of the old Chrysophilites.  A bank-note can no more satisfy the touch of a true sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could return her husband’s embrace in the shades.  See the Cave of Mammon in Spenser; Barabas’s contemplation of his wealth, in the Rich Jew of Malta; Luke’s raptures in the City Madam; the idolatry and absolute gold-worship of the miser Jaques in this early comic production of Ben Jonson’s.  Above all, hear Guzman, in that excellent old translation of the Spanish Rogue, expatiate on the “ruddy cheeks of your golden ruddocks, your Spanish pistolets, your plump and full-faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned pieces-of-eight of Castile,” which he and his fellows the beggars kept secret to themselves, and