itting the very best lines, destroyed the whole
effect of that beautiful passage. That he should be so negligent is to
be deplored. For errors in judgment, deficiency in talents and powers,
nay, for casual lapses themselves, candor will make allowance--but want
of diligence admits of no excuse or palliation.

ALEXANDER.

In this character Mr. Cooper would extort commendation from the most
churlish critic. Alexander is a compound of Hero and Lover, and in both
extravagant and enthusiastic almost to madness. It is in the former of
these Mr. C. chiefly displayed his powers. His voice, his person, and
his manner qualified him for an impressive delineation of that portion
of the character--but as a lover Mr. Cooper only serves to remind us
with disadvantage to him, of actors we have seen before. In the proud
and boastful exultation, the starts of anger, the quick resentment, and
ardent friendship, the sudden alternation of storm and calm, and, in a
word, the medley of eccentric vices and virtues which compose this
gigantic offspring of Lee's bright but fevered brain, the severest
criticism must concur with the public opinion, which ranks Mr. Cooper's
Alexander high among the first specimens of the art exhibited in the
English language. Adverting to the first scene of the second act, when
irritated by Lysimachus demanding the princess Parisatis in marriage; in
the swell of passion from the mild rebuke,

Lysimachus, no more--it is not well;
My word you know, was to Hephestion given,

up to the storm of rage

"My slave, whom I
Could tread to clay, dares utter bloody threats."

The climax of temper was in every transition marked by Mr. Cooper with a
natural propriety which, though a vigorous and accurate critical
judgment might suggest, nothing but a high dramatic genius, seconded by
correspondent organs, could possibly have executed.

Several steps higher still in merit criticism must place the whole of
the banquet scene. The intoxicated vanity of Alexander--his soft and
puerile susceptibility of gross and fulsome adulation, his idle contest
with the blunt old Clytus, his fury and cruel murder of that brave old
soldier, and his outrageous grief and self reproach for that murder, in
all of which the fiery brain of the poet has urged the passions to the
utmost verge of nature, Mr. Cooper was all for which the most sanguine
admirer could wish, or a reasonable critic hope. But as, in the be