much spectacle, scenery, and excitement, the technic shows scarcely a bowing acquaintance with the theatre. A few of the plays were acted, one being melodramatized, but none proved effective. They gained, however, the admiration of Campbell, Byron, and Scott, and of a wide circle of readers. Their morality, their proximity to poetry, their definiteness of purpose won a popular appreciation for their analyses of passion, denied to more imaginative, subtle, or revolutionary poems. Her plays, if forbidden the theatres, invaded the prairies and forest primeval; and Miss Baillie was justly gratified by receiving a diploma "constituting her a member of the Michigan Historical Society." Wordsworth and Coleridge were in 1796-97, like Miss Baillie, writing tragedies of passions[47] arising from within and ending in ruin, and, like her, they were seeking presentation in the theatres. Wordsworth's "Borderers" treats of the deep springs of villany, and was based, as he thought, on his experiences with human nature in France during the revolutionary period, but he seems rather to have made a study of Shakespeare's Iago operating in a band of Schiller's robbers, and animated by the abhorrent principles of Godwin's "Political Justice." Coleridge's "Osorio," a study of remorse, also derived its inspiration from books rather than from observation. Sixteen years later, in 1813, remodeled and pruned of some of its earlier radicalism, it won as "Remorse" a fair stage success, and led a partial revival of the poetical drama in the theatres. The plot of a wicked brother who reports the death of the good brother and seeks to win his betrothed, was suggested by "The Robbers"; the inquisition, sorcery, cavern, dungeon, and other elements of the spectacle were derived from the Radcliffian school; but the main inspiration was Shakespeare. Coleridge planned a revenge play, with a characteristic modification; the avenger was to seek, instead of blood, the remorse of the villain. The elaborate plot, which might have done duty for an Elizabethan revenge play or for one of Lewis's romances, has no connection with the main theme of the play. The opening acts disclose everything, and the interest in the full awakening of remorse in the wicked brother is not contributed to by the intrigue, magic, and insurrection, nor is it made veracious in the madness to which the remorse drives. But both the beautiful descriptive poetry and the underlying searching for tragic passion inspired other poets drama-ward. "Zapolya" (1817) has little philosophical interest underlying its romantic plot, suggested by the "Winter's Tale," but it displays a conscious effort to provide the movement, variety, spectacle, and surprise needful for the stage. Coleridge gave these in an Elizabethan profusion that must have overwhelmed the managers. But even had he made the revisions that they required, he could hardly have prevented his poetry from impeding rather than adorning his melodramatic action.