_Isaac Comnenus_--in which a recent critic discovers much of that Byronian vein upon which Mr Taylor is severe in his own criticisms--being little remarkable in itself, as well as the least remarkable of his dramatic performances, need not detain us. The career of _Philip van Artevelde_ belongs to an era when, as Sir James Stephen remarks, the whole of Europe, under the influence of some strange sympathy, was agitated by the simultaneous discontents of all her great civic populations--when the insurgent spirit, commencing in the Italian republics, had spread from the south to the north of the Alps, everywhere marking its advance by tumult, spoil, and bloodshed. 'Wat Tyler and his bands had menaced London; and the communes of Flanders, under the command of Philip van Artevelde, had broken out into open war with the counts, their seigneurs, and with their suzerain lord, the Duke of Burgundy. On the issue of that attempt the fate of the royal and baronial power seemed to hang in France, not less than in Flanders.'[5] The drama composed by Mr Taylor to represent the fortunes of the 'Chief Captain of the White Hoods and of Ghent,' consists of two plays and an interlude--_The Lay of Elena_--and being, as he says in his preface, equal in length to about six such plays as are adapted to the stage, was not, of course, intended to solicit the most sweet voices of pit and gallery, although it has since been subjected to that ordeal at the instance of Mr Macready. Historic truth is said to be preserved in it, as far as the material events are concerned--with the usual exception of such occasional dilatations and compressions of time as are required in dramatic composition. And notwithstanding the limited imagination and the too artificial passion which characterise it, _Philip van Artevelde_ is in very many respects a noble work, as it certainly is its author's chef-d'oeuvre. It has been pronounced by no mean authority the superior of every dramatic composition of modern times, including the _Sardanapalus_ of Lord Byron, the _Remorse_ of Coleridge, and the _Cenci_ of Shelley. The portraiture of Philip is one of those elaborate and highly-finished studies which repay as well as require minute investigation. He is at once profoundly meditative and surpassingly active. His energy of brain is only rivalled by his readiness of hand. In him the active mood and the passive--the practical and the ideal--the objective and the subjective--are not as parallel lines that never meet, but are sections of one line, describing the circle of his all-embracing mind. His youth has been, that of a dreamy recluse, the scorn of men of the world. 'Oh, fear him not, my lord,' says one of them to the Earl of Flanders: