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diff --git a/old/55932-0.txt b/old/55932-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ea95b13..0000000 --- a/old/55932-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,24175 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The collected works of William Hazlitt, -Vol. 1 (of 12), by William Hazlitt - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 1 (of 12) - -Author: William Hazlitt - -Editor: A. R. Waller - Arnold Glover - -Other: W. E. Henley - -Release Date: November 11, 2017 [EBook #55932] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLECTED WORKS--WILLIAM HAZLITT, VOL 1 *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - THE - COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT - IN TWELVE VOLUMES - - - VOLUME ONE - - - - - _All rights reserved_ - -[Illustration: - - _William Hazlitt._ - - _Aged 13. - from a Miniature on Ivory - Painted by his Brother._ -] - - - - - THE COLLECTED WORKS OF - WILLIAM HAZLITT - - EDITED BY A. R. WALLER AND ARNOLD GLOVER - - WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY - W. E. HENLEY - - ❦ - - The Round Table - - Characters of Shakespear’s Plays - - A Letter to William Gifford, Esq. - - ❦ - - 1902 - LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. - McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK - - - - - Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY vii - - EDITORS’ PREFACE xxvii - - THE ROUND TABLE xxix - - CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS, 165 - - A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ., 363 - - NOTES 415 - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -Hazlitt’s father, a minister in the Unitarian Church, was the son of an -Antrim dissenter, who had removed to Tipperary; Hazlitt’s mother was the -daughter of a Cambridgeshire yeoman; so that there is small room for -wonder if Hazlitt were all his life distinguished by a fine -pugnaciousness of mind, a fiery courage, an excellent doggedness of -temper, and (not to crack the wind of the poor metaphor) a brilliancy in -the use of his hands unequalled in his time, and since his time, by any -writing Englishman. Of course, he was very much else; or this monument -to his genius would scarce be building, this draft to his credit would -have been drawn for To-Morrow on To-Day. But, while he lived, his -fighting talent was the sole thing in his various and splendid gift that -was evident to the powers that were; and, inasmuch as he loved nothing -so dearly as asserting himself to the disadvantage of certain -superstitions which the said powers esteemed the very stuff of life, -they did their utmost to dissemble his uncommon merits, and to present -him to the world at large as a person whose morals were deplorable, -whose nose was pimpled, whose mind was lewd, whose character would no -more bear inspection than his English, whose heart and soul and taste -were irremediable, and who, as he persisted in regarding ‘the Corsican -fiend’ as a culmination of human genius and character, must for that -reason especially—(but there were many others)—be execrated as a public -enemy, and stuck in the pillory whenever, in the black malice of his -corrupt and poisonous heart, he sought, by feigning an affection for -Shakespeare, or an interest in metaphysics, to recommend his vulgar, -mean, pernicious personality to the attention of a loyal, God-fearing, -church-going, tax-paying, Pope-and-Pretender-hating British Public. I -cannot say that I regret the very scandalous attacks that were made on -Hazlitt: since, if they had not been, we should have lacked some -admirable pages in the _Political Essays_ and _The Spirit of the Age_, -nor should we now be privileged to rejoice in the dignified and splendid -savagery of the _Letter to William Gifford_. And, if I do not regret -them for myself and the many who think with me, still less can I wish -them wanting for Hazlitt’s sake; for if they had been, who shall say how -dull and how profitless, how weary and flat and stale, some years of -what he described, in his last words to his kind, as ‘a happy life’—how -mean and beggarly may not some days in these years have seemed? But -there is, after all, a reason for being rather sorry than not that -Hazlitt’s polemic was so brilliant, his young conviction so unalterably -constant, his example so detestable as it seemed to the magnificent -ruffian in _Blackwood_ and the infinitely spiteful underling in _The -Quarterly_. The British Public of those days was a good, hard-hitting, -hard-drinking, hard-living lot; and, in the matter of letters, there was -no guile in it. It read its Campbell, its Rogers, its Moore, its Hook -and Egan and Jon Bee; it accepted its convinced and pedantic sycophant -in Southey, its gay, light-hearted protestant in Leigh Hunt; it nibbled -at its Wordsworth, knew not what to make of its Coleridge, swallowed its -Cobbett (that prince of pugilists) as its morning rasher and toast; it -made much of Hone, yet was far from contemptuous of Westmacott; it laid -itself open to its Scott and its Byron, Michael and Satan, the Angel of -Acceptance and the Angel of Revolt. Withal it was essentially a Tory -Public: a public long practised in fearing God and honouring the King; -with half an ear for Major Cartwright and his like, and a whole mind for -the story of Randal and Cribb; honestly and jovially proud of Nelson and -‘The Duke,’ but neither loving the Emperor nor seeking to understand -him. Now, to Hazlitt the Revolution was humanity _in excelsis_, while -the Emperor, being democracy incarnate, and so a complete expression of -character and human genius, was as his god. Gifford, then, and Wilson, -had small difficulty in blasting Hazlitt’s fame, and in so far ruining -Hazlitt’s chance that ’tis but now, after some seventy years, that he -takes his place in literary history as the hero of a Complete Edition. -In the meanwhile he has had praise, and praise again. But it has come -ever from the few, and he has yet to be considered of the general as a -critic of many elements in human activity, a master of his -mother-tongue, and one, and that one not the least, in an epoch -illustrious in the achievement of Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth, the -inimitable Cobbett, Byron and Sir Walter, Coleridge, the Arch-Potency -(who, ‘prone on the flood’ of failure, ever ‘lies floating many a -rood’), and the thrice-beloved Lamb. - - - I - -The elder Hazlitt was trained in Glasgow. A man of spirit and -understanding, an active and a vigilant minister, he married Grace -Loftus, the Wisbech yeoman’s daughter, in 1766; and in 1778 (he being -much older than she), the last of their children, their son William, was -born to them at Maidstone. Five years later this son accompanied his -parents to Philadelphia. There the elder Hazlitt preached and lectured -for some fifteen months; but in 1786–87, having meanwhile established -the earliest Unitarian church in America, he returned to England, and -settled at Wem, in Shropshire, which was practically Hazlitt’s first -taste of native earth. A precocious youngster, well grounded by his -father, himself a man of parts and reading,[1] he was responsible as -early as 1792 for a _New Theory of Criminal and Civil Jurisprudence_, -and at fifteen he went to the Unitarian College at Hackney, there to -study for the ministry. But his mind changed. In the meantime he learned -something of literature, something of metaphysics, something of -painting, something (I doubt not) of life; the Revolution blazed out, -Bonaparte fell falconwise upon Austrian Italy, and approved himself the -greatest captain since Marlborough; there was a strong unrest in time -and the destiny of man; the ambitions of life were changed, the -possibilities and conditions of life transformed. The skies thrilled -with the dawn of a new day, and Hazlitt: already, it is fair to -conjecture, at grips with that potent and implacable devil of sex which -possessed him so vigorously for so many years; already, too, the devout -and militant Radical, the fanatic of Bonaparte, he remained till the -end: was no longer for the pulpit. And at this moment existence was -transfigured for him also. In the January of 1798, Coleridge, that -embodied Inspiration, visited the elder Hazlitt at Wem, and preached his -last (Unitarian) sermon in the chapel there. He was at his best, his -freshest, his most copious, his most expressive and persuasive; he had -the poet’s eye, the poet’s mouth, the poet’s voice, impulse, authority, -style; he had already ‘fed on honey-dew, and drunk the milk of -Paradise’; and he carried Hazlitt clean off his legs. To the sombre, -personal, scarce lettered but very thoughtful youth this voluble and -affecting Apparition was the bearer of a revelation. He listened to -Coleridge as to a John Baptist. He dared to talk metaphysics, and was so -far rewarded for his valour as to be encouraged to persevere.[2] What -was of vastly greater importance, he was asked to Stowey in the spring -of the same year: an event from which he dated the true beginnings of -his intellectual life. - -In that centre of enchantment he stayed three weeks. It was a Golden -Year. Hazlitt was drunk throughout with what I should like to call -Neophytism. Coleridge was magnificent—elusive, archimagian, -irresistible; Wordsworth was opinionated but sublime; at intervals, as -in Sir Richard Burton’s _Thousand Nights and a Night_, they ‘repeated -the following verses.’ It was a time—O, but it was a time! A time of -ecstasy: ‘When proud-pied April was in all his trim,’ and even ‘heavy -Saturn’ must have laughed, if only to keep his yoke-fellow, Wordsworth, -in company; Wordsworth with his thick airs, and his luminous Belt, and -his dull but steady-going group of Moons! A time of gold, I say; yet had -it a most strange outcome. In 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth were -Revolutionaries in everything: they looked to France for liberty, for -change, for a shining and enduring example. Hazlitt was with them now -and here: his also was a revolutionary soul, he also was of a mind with -Danton, he also looked to France for leading and light, he also held the -assault delivered upon France for an assault against Freedom. But -Coleridge and Wordsworth changed their minds, and readjusted their -points of view; and he did not. They loved not Bonaparte; and he did. -And the end of it was that, so far as I know, he never wrote with so -ripe and sensual a gust: not even, to my mind, when he was merely -annihilating Gifford: as when, long years after Nether-Stowey, he broke -in upon the strong, solid hold of Wordsworth’s egotism, and tore to -tatters—tatters which he flung upon the wind—the old, greasy prophet’s -mantle,[3] which Coleridge had sported to so little purpose for so many -years. To Hazlitt, the dissenter born, the deeply brooding, the -inflexible—to Hazlitt, I say, these Twin-Stars of the Romantic Movement -were common turn-coats; and he dealt with them on occasion as he thought -fit. But he never lost his interest in them; and when it comes to a -comparison between Wordsworth, the renegade, and Byron, the leader of -storming-parties, the captain of forlorn-hopes, then is his idiosyncrasy -revealed. He hacks and stabs, he jibes and sneers and denies, till there -is no Byron left, and the sole poet of the century is the ‘gentlemanly -creature—reads nothing but his own poetry, I believe,’—whose best -passages, in a moment of supreme geniality, he once likened, not to -their advantage, to those of ‘the classic Akenside.’ - - - II - -It was from Nether-Stowey that Hazlitt dated his regard for poetry. But -if literature came late to him, as (his father’s office and his own -metaphysical inklings aiding) it did, he ever cherished a pure and -ardent passion for it, once it had come. Yet he was by no means widely -read, and in his last years seldom finished a new book. First and last, -indeed, he was a man of few books and fewer authors. Shakespeare, Burke, -Cervantes, Rabelais, Milton, the _Decameron_, the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ and -the _Confessions_, Richardson’s epics of the parlour and Fielding’s -epics of the road—these things and their kind he read intensely; and, -when it pleased him to speak of them, it was ever in the terms of -understanding and regard. Yet it was long ere he had any thought of -writing; and it was necessity alone that made him a man of letters. In -the beginning, the Pulpit proving impossible, he turned to painting for -a career, and, after certain studies, presumably under his elder brother -John,[4] and possibly under Northcote, he went to the Paris of the First -Consul, and painted there for some four months in a Louvre which the -thrift of Bonaparte had stored with the choicest plunder in Italian Art. -I know not whether or no he could ever have been a painter. Haydon, who -neither loved nor understood him, and was, besides, a man who could -greatly dare and ‘toil terribly’—Haydon says that he was at once too -lazy and too timid ever to succeed in painting: an art in which, as -Haydon showed, and as Millet was presently to say, ‘You must flay -yourself alive, and give your skin.’[5] I do not think that Hazlitt was -daunted by what may be called the painfulness of painting; for in -letters he was soon enough to prove that he had in him to face a world -in arms, and to tincture his writings, if need were, with the best blood -of his heart. In any case, after divers essays at copying in the -Louvre,[6] and certain attempts at portraiture on his return to -England,[7] he found that he could not excel; that, in fact, he was -neither Titian nor Rembrandt, nor could he even be Sir Joshua. So he -painted no more, but went on _reading_ certain painters: very much, I -assume, as he went on taking certain authors; because he loved them for -themselves, and found emotions—and not only emotions, but -sensations[8]—in them. - -His ideals are Claude, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poussin, Titian; he gives you -very gentlemanly and intelligent estimates of Watteau and Velasquez; he -has an eye—a right one—for Rubens and Van Dyck; he exults in Jan Steen, -has words of worth for Ruysdael and Hobbima, and gives Turner as neat a -_croc-en-jambe_ as you could wish to see. But, despite his training and -his gift, he is no more in advance of his age than the best of us here -and now. To him the Carraccis and Salvator are _sommités_ of a kind; if, -so far as I remember, he will have nought to do with Carlo Dolci, he -will not do without his Guido; I have read no word of his on Lawrence, -no word of his on Constable, none on Morland; on Hogarth he is chiefly -literary, on Turner not much more than diabolically ingenious. Wisely or -not, he took pictures as he took books: they might be few, but they must -be good; and, not only good but, of (as he believed) the best. If they -were not, or if they were new, he drew them not to his heart, nor -adorned the chambers of his mind with them. Those chambers were filled -with good things long since done. To him, then, what were the best -things doing? It was his habit to take the good thing on; savour its -excellences to their last sucket; meditate it strictly, jealously, -privily, longingly; say, if it must be so, a few last words about -it—some for the painter, more for the man of letters;[9] and then...? -Well, then he accepted the situation. I do not know that he cared much -for Keats; I do know that he found Shelley impossible, that he was never -an exalted Wordsworthian, and that he hesitated—(ever so little, but he -hesitated!)—even at Charles Lamb. Politics and all, in truth, he was a -prophet who adored the past, and had but an infidel eye for the promise -of the years. He was interested only in the highest achievement; and to -be the highest even that must lie behind him. Thus, Fielding was good, -and Rubens; Sir Joshua was good, and so were Richardson and Smollett; -so, likewise, Shakespeare was good, and Raphael and Titian were -good—these with Milton and Rembrandt, and Burke and Rousseau and -Boccaccio; and it was well. Well with them, and well—especially -well!—with him: they had achieved, and here was he, the perfect lover, -to whom their achievement was as an enchanted garden, a Prospero’s -Island abounding in romantic and inspiring chances, unending marvels, -miracles of vision and solace and pure, perennial delight. And if these, -the ‘Thrones, Dominations, Powers,’ had done their work, and were -venerable in it, so also in their degrees and sorts had Congreve and -Watteau, Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Wycherley and -Jordaens; so had even Salvator and John Buncle. In dealing with -painters, and with purely painters’ pictures, Hazlitt generally strikes -a right note.[10] But the man of letters in him is inevitably first; and -’tis not insignificant that some of the ‘crack passages’ in his writings -about pictures are rhapsodies about places—Burleigh or Oxford—or pieces -of pure literature like that very human and ingenious essay ‘On the -Pleasures of Painting,’ which is one of the best good things in _Table -Talk_. - - - III - -So Hazlitt the painter was gathered to his fathers, and in his stead a -Hazlitt reigned about whom the world knows little worth the telling: a -Hazlitt who abridged philosophers, and made grammars, and compiled -anthologies; a married and domesticated Hazlitt; a Hazlitt with a son -and heir, and a wife who seems to have cared as little for his works and -him as, in the long run, he assuredly cared for her company and her. The -lady’s name was Stoddart; she was a brisk, inconsequent, unsexual sort -of person—a friend of Mary Lamb; and, like the only Mrs. Pecksniff, ‘she -had a small property.’ It was situate at Winterslow, certain miles from -Salisbury, and Hazlitt, who loved the neighbourhood, and clung to it -till the end, has so far illustrated the name that, if there could ever -be a Hazlitt Cult, the place would instantly become a shrine. It was a -cottage, within easy walking distance of Wilton and Stonehenge; and in -1812 the Hazlitts, who were made one in 1808, departed it—it and the -well-beloved woods of Norman Court—for 19 York Street, Westminster.[11] -Hence it was that he issued to deliver his first course of lectures;[12] -and here it was that he entertained those friends he had, made himself a -reputation by writing in papers and magazines, drank hard, and cured -himself of drinking, and long ere the end came found his wife -insufferable. In the beginning he worked in the Reporters’ Gallery, -where he made notes (in long hand) for _The Morning Chronicle_, and -learned to take more liquor than was good for him.[13] In this same -journal he printed some of his best political work, and broke ground as -a critic of acting; and he left it only because he could not help -quarrelling with its proprietors. - -Another stand-by of his was _The Champion_, to his work in which he owed -a not unprofitable connexion with _The Edinburgh_; yet another, _The -Examiner_, to which, with much dramatic criticism, he contributed, at -Leigh Hunt’s suggestion, the set of essays reprinted as _The Round -Table_, and in which he may therefore be said to have discovered his -avocation, and given the measure of his best quality. Then, in 1817, he -published his _Characters of Shakespeare_, which he dedicated to Charles -Lamb; in 1818 he reprinted a series of lectures (at the Surrey -Institute) on the English poets;[14] in 1819–20 he delivered from the -same platform two courses more—on the Comic Writers and the Age of -Elizabeth. He wrote for _The Liberal_, _The Yellow Dwarf_, _The London -Magazine_—(to which he may very well have introduced the unknown -Elia)—_Colburn’s New Monthly_; he returned to the _Chronicle_ in 1824; -in 1825 he published _The Spirit of the Age_, in 1826 _The Plain -Speaker_, the _Boswell Redivivus_ in 1827; and in this last year he set -to work, at Winterslow, on a life of Napoleon. That was the beginning of -the end. He had no turn for history, nor none for research; his methods -were personal, his results singular and brief; he was as it were an -accidental writer, whose true material was in himself. His health broke, -and worsened; his publishers went bankrupt; he lost the best part of the -£500 which he had hoped to earn by his work; and though, consulting none -but anti-English authorities, he lived to complete a book containing -much strong thinking and not a few striking passages, it was a thing -foredoomed to failure: a matter in which the nation, still hating its -tremendous enemy, and still rejoicing in the man and the battle which -had brought him to the ground, would not, and could not take an -interest. Two volumes were published in 1828 (Sir Walter’s _Napoleon_ -appeared in 1827), and two more in 1830; but the work of writing them -killed the writer.[15] His digestion, always feeble, was ruined; and in -the September of 1830 he died. He was largely, I should say, a sacrifice -to tea, which he drank, in vast quantities, of extraordinary strength. -However this be, his ending was (as he’d have loved to put it) ‘as a -Chrissom child’s.’[16] - - - IV - -Thus much, thus all-too little, of his course in print. For his life, -despite his many ‘bursts of confidence,’ the admissions of his grandson, -and the discoveries of such friends as Patmore, the half of it, I think, -has to be told to us. This was not his fault, for he was in no sense -secretive: he would no more lie about himself than he would lie about -Southey or Gifford. His trick of drinking was, while it lasted, public; -he proclaimed with all his lungs his frank and full approval of the -fundamentals of the Revolution and his preference of Bonaparte before -all the Kings in Europe; he despised Shelley the politician, and -rejected Shelley the poet, and he cherished and made the most he could -of his resentment against Coleridge and Wordsworth, though his disdain -for concealment perilled his friendship with Lamb, and well nigh cost -him the far more facile regard of Leigh Hunt; while, as for Byron, he so -bitterly resented the ‘noble Lord’s’ pre-eminency that he made no -difference, strongly as he contemned the Laureate, between the -Laureate’s _Vision of Judgment_, a piece of English verse immortal by -the sheer force of its absurdity, and that other _Vision of Judgment_, -which is one of the great things in English poetry. ’Twas much the same -in life. Poor Mrs. Hazlitt, though she was well-read, of no account as -an housekeeper, ‘fond of incongruous finery,’ and capable of -child-bearing withal, was, one may take for granted, not distinguished -as a woman. Now, her husband, thinker as he approved himself, was very -much of a male. Who runs may read of his early loves—Miss Railton and -the rest; ’tis history—at any rate ’tis history according to -Wordsworth[17]—that once, in Lakeland, he so dealt with the local beauty -that he came very near to tasting of the local pond; when Patmore walked -home with him to Westminster, after his first lecture in the Surrey -Institute, the wayside nymphs flocked to his encounter, and—(so Patmore -says)—he knew them all;[18] he has himself recorded the confession that -in the matter of mob-caps and black stockings and red elbows—in fact, on -the score of your maid-servant—he could flourish a list as long, or -thereabouts, as Leporello’s. I know not whether he lied or spoke the -truth;[19] but I can scarce believe that he lied. I should rather opine -that on this point, as on others, Hazlitt, a gross and extravagant -admirer (be it remembered) of J.-J. Rousseau, was, and is, entirely -credible. We may take it that his veracity is beyond reproach. But ’tis -another matter with his taste; and for that I can say no more than that -I have listened to so many confidences: - - From some we loved, the loveliest and the best - That from his Vintage rolling Time has pressed: - -that I hold it for merely unessential. - -But the man who habitually hugs his housemaid is, whether he boast of it -or not, no more superior to consequences than another: especially if he -have, as Hazlitt had, an ardent imagination and a teeming waste of -sentiment. And so Hazlitt found. About 1819 he ceased from consorting -with his wife; and in 1820 he lodged with a tailor, one Walker, in -Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. Walker, a most respectable man, -had daughters, and one of these, a girl well broken-in, it would seem, -to the ways of ‘gentlemen’—a girl with a dull eye, a ‘sinuous gait,’ and -a habit of sitting on the knees of ‘gentlemen’; a girl, in fine, who is -only to be described by an old and sane and homely but unquotable -designation—this poor half-harlot took on our Don Juan of the area, and -brought him to utter grief. He looked at passion, as embodied in Sarah -Walker, until it grew to be the world to him; he went about like a man -drunken and dazed, telling the story of his slighted love to anybody -that would listen to it;[20] now he raved and was rampant, now was he -soul-stricken and heart-broken; he swore he’d marry Walker whether she -would or not, and to this end he persuaded his wife to follow him to -Edinburgh, and there divorce him—_pour cause_, as the lady and her legal -adviser had every reason to believe;[21] and having achieved a divorce, -which was no divorce in law, and been finally refused by the young woman -in Southampton Buildings, he set to work assiduously to coin his madness -into drachmas, and wrote, always with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his eye, -that _Liber Amoris_ which the unknowing reader will find in our Second -Volume. It is a book by no means bad—if you can at all away with it. -Indeed, it is unique in English, and the hundred guineas Hazlitt got for -it were uncommonly well earned. But to away with it at all—that is the -difficulty; and, as it varies with the temperaments of them that read -the book, I shall discourse no more of it, but content myself with -noting that, in writing the _Liber Amoris_, Hazlitt wrote off Sarah -Walker.[22] He had been in love with a housemaid, but he had been very -much more in love with his love; and, having wearied all he knew with -descriptions of his feelings, he wrote those feelings down, cleared his -system, and became himself again. ’Twas Goethe’s way, I believe—his and -many another’s; the world will scarce get disaccustomed to it while -there are women and writing men. What distinguishes Hazlitt from a whole -wilderness of self-chroniclers is the fulness of his revelation. It is -extraordinary; but, even so, Rousseau had shown him the way. And perhaps -the simple truth about the _Liber_ is that it is the best Rousseau—the -best and the nearest to the _Confessions_—done since Rousseau died. - -Sarah Hazlitt married no more; but her husband did. In 1824 he took to -wife a certain Mrs. Bridgewater. She was Scots by birth, had lived much -abroad, had married and buried a Colonel Bridgewater, was of excellent -repute, and had about £300 a year; and with her new husband and his son -by Sarah Stoddart—(who had an idea that his mother had been wronged, and -seems to have been a most uncomfortable travelling companion)—she toured -it awhile in France and Italy. On the return journey the Hazlitts left -her in Paris; and when the elder, writing from London, asked her when -she purposed to come home to him, she replied that she did not purpose -to come home to him: that, in fact, she had done with him, and he would -see her no more. So far as I know, he never did; so that, as his -grandson says, this second marriage was but ‘an episode.’ Apparently it -was the last in his life; for neither Mrs. Hazlitt attended him in his -mortal illness, nor was there any woman at his bed’s head when he -passed. - - - V - -It is told of him that he was dark-eyed and dark-haired, slim in figure, -rather slovenly in his habit; that he valued himself on his effect in -evening dress; that his manners were rather ceremonious than easy; that -he had a wonderfully eloquent face, with a mouth as expressive as -Kean’s, and a frown like the Giaour’s own[23]—that Giaour whom he did -not love. He worshipped women, but was awkward and afraid with them; he -played a good game of fives, and would walk his forty to fifty miles a -day; he would lie a-bed till two in the afternoon, then rise, dally with -his breakfast until eight without ever moving from his tea-pot and his -chair, and go to a theatre, a bite at the Southampton, and talk till two -in the morning.[24] That he excelled in talk is beyond all doubt. -Witness after witness is here to his wit, his insight, his grip on -essentials, his beautiful trick of paradox, his brilliancy in attack, -his desperate defence, his varying, far-glancing, inextinguishable -capacity for expression. And he was himself—Hazlitt: a man who borrowed -nobody’s methods, set no limits to the field of discussion, nor made -other men wonder if this were no talk but a lecture. He bore no likeness -to that ‘great but useless genius,’ Coleridge: who, beginning well as -few begin, lived ever after ‘on the sound of his own voice’; none to -Wordsworth, whose most inspiring theme was his own poetry; none to -Sheridan, who ‘never oped his mouth but out there flew’ a jest; none to -Lamb, who——But no; I cannot imagine Lamb in talk. Hazlitt himself has -plucked out only a tag or two of Lamb’s mystery; and I own that, even in -the presence of the notes in which he sets down Lamb as Lamb was to his -intimates, I am divided in appreciation between the pair. Lamb for the -unexpected, the incongruous, the profound, the jest that bred -seriousness, the pun that was that and a light upon dark places, a touch -of the dread, the all-disclosing Selene, besides; Hazlitt for none of -these but for himself; and what that was I have tried to show. Well; -Lamb, Coleridge, Sheridan, Hazlitt, Hunt, Wordsworth—all are dead, tall -men of their tongues as they were. And dead is Burke, and Fox is dead, -and Byron, most quizzical of lords! And of them all there is nothing -left but their published work; and of those that have told us most about -some of them, ‘in their habit as they lived,’ the best and the -strictest-seeing, the most eloquent and the most persuasive, is -assuredly Hazlitt. And, being something of an expert in talk,[25] I -think that, if I could break the grave and call the great ghosts back to -earth for a spell of their mortal fury, I would begin and end with Lamb -and Hazlitt: Lamb as he always was;[26] Hazlitt in one of his high and -mighty moods, sweeping life, and letters, and the art of painting, and -the nature of man, and the curious case of woman (especially the curious -case of woman!) into a rapture of give-and-take, a night-long series of -achievements in consummate speech. - - - VI - -Many men, as Coleridge, have written well, and yet talked better than -they wrote. I have named Coleridge, though his talk, prodigious as it -was, in the long run ended in ‘Om-m-mject’ and ‘Sum-m-mject,’ and -though, some enchanting and undying verses apart, his writing, save when -it is merely critical, is nowadays of small account. But, in truth, I -have in my mind, rather, two friends, both dead, of whom one, an artist -in letters, lived to conquer the English-speaking world, while the -second, who should, I think, have been the greater writer, addicted -himself to another art, took to letters late in life, and, having the -largest and the most liberal utterance I have known, was constrained by -the very process of composition so to produce himself that scarce a -touch of his delightful, apprehensive, all-expressing spirit appeared -upon his page. I take these two cases because both are excessive. In the -one you had both speech and writing; in the other you found a rarer -brain, a more fanciful and daring humour, a richer gusto, perhaps a -wider knowledge, in any event a wider charity. And at one point the two -met, and that point was talk. Therein each was pre-eminent, each -irresistible, each a master after his kind, each endowed with a full -measure of those gifts that qualify the talker’s temperament: as voice -and eye and laugh, look and gesture, humour and fantasy, audacity and -agility of mind, a lively and most impudent invention, a copious -vocabulary, a right gift of foolery, a just, inevitable sense of -conversational right and wrong. Well; one wrote like an angel, the other -like poor Poll; and both so far excelled in talk that I can take it on -me to say that they who know them only in print scarce know them at all. -’Twas thus, I imagine, with Hazlitt. He wrote the best he could; but I -see many reasons to believe that he was very much more brilliant and -convincing at the Southampton than he is in the most convincing and the -most brilliant of his Essays. He was a full man; he had all the talker’s -gifts; he exulted in all kinds of oral opportunities; what more is there -to say? Sure ’tis the case of all that are born to talk as well as -write. They live their best in talk, and what they write is but a sop -for posterity: a last dying speech and confession (as it were) to show -that not for nothing were they held rare fellows in their day. - -This is not to say that Hazlitt was not an admirable man of letters. His -theories were many, for he was a reality among men, and so had many -interests, and there was none on which he did not write forcibly, -luminously, arrestingly. He had the true sense of his material, and used -the English language as a painter his pigments, as a musician the -varying and abounding tonalities that constitute a symphonic scheme. His -were a beautiful and choice vocabulary, an excellent ear for cadence, a -notable gift of expression. In fact, when Stevenson was pleased to -declare that ‘we are mighty fine fellows, but we cannot write like -William Hazlitt,’ he said no more than the truth. Whether or not we are -mighty fine fellows is a Great Perhaps; but that none of us, from -Stevenson down, can as writers come near to Hazlitt—this, to me, is -merely indubitable. To note that he now and then writes blank verse is -to note that he sometimes writes impassioned prose;[27] he misquoted -habitually; he was a good hater, and could be monstrous unfair; he was -given to thinking twice, and his second thoughts were not always better -than his first; he repeated himself as seemed good to him. But in the -criticism of politics, the criticism of letters, the criticism of -acting, the criticism and expression of life,[28] there is none like -him. His politics are not mine; I think he is ridiculously mistaken when -he contrasts the Wordsworth of the best things in _The Excursion_ with -the ‘classic Akenside’; his _Byron_ is the merest petulance; his _Burke_ -(when he is in a bad temper with Burke), his _Fox_, his _Pitt_, his -_Bonaparte_—these are impossible. Also, I never talk art or life with -him but I disagree. But I go on reading him, all the same; and I find -that technically and spiritually I am always the better for the bout. -Where outside Boswell is there better talk than in Hazlitt’s _Boswell -Redivivus_—his so-called _Conversations with Northcote_? And his _Age of -Elizabeth_, and his _Comic Writers_, and his _Spirit of the Age_—where -else to look for such a feeling for differences, such a sense of -literature, such an instant, such a masterful, whole-hearted interest in -the marking and distinguishing qualities of writers? And _The Plain -Speaker_—is it not at least as good reading as (say) _Virginibus -Puerisque_ and the discoursings of the late imperishable Mr. Pater! His -_Political Essays_ is readable after—how many years? His notes on Kean -and the Siddons are as novel and convincing as when they were penned. In -truth, he is ever a solace and a refreshment. As a critic of letters he -lacks the intense, immortalising vision, even as he lacks, in places, -the illuminating and inevitable style of Lamb. But if he be less -savoury, he is also more solid, and he gives you phrases, conclusions, -splendours of insight and expression, high-piled and golden essays in -appreciation: as the _Wordsworth_ and the _Coleridge_ of the _Political -Essays_, the character of Hamlet, the note on Shakespeare’s style, the -_Horne Tooke_, the _Cervantes_, the _Rousseau_, the _Sir Thomas Browne_, -the _Cobbet_: that must ever be rated high among the possessions of the -English mind. - -As a writer, therefore, it is with Lamb that I would bracket him: they -are dissimilars, but they go gallantly and naturally together—_par -nobile fratrum_.[29] Give us these two, with some ripe Cobbett, a volume -of Southey, some Wordsworth, certain pages of Shelley, a great deal of -the Byron who wrote letters, and we get the right prose of the time. The -best of it all, perhaps, is the best of Lamb. But Hazlitt’s, for -different qualities, is so imminent and shining a second that I hesitate -as to the pre-eminency. Probably the race is Lamb’s. But Hazlitt is ever -Hazlitt; and at his highest moments Hazlitt is hard to beat, and has not -these many years been beaten. - - W. E. H. - ------ - -Footnote 1: - - Hazlitt has glanced at him in his notes on dissenters and dissent in - the _Political Essays_, and has given a further taste of him in that - very notable and gracious piece, ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’ - -Footnote 2: - - In 1805 he produced his essay on the Principles of Human Action. Being - no metaphysician, I have never read this work; but Mr. Leslie Stephen, - who is a very competent person in these matters, I am told, assures me - (_D. N. B._) that it is ‘scrupulously dry,’ though ‘showing great - acuteness.’ This, I take leave to say—this is Hazlitt all over. None - has written of the workaday elements in life and time with a rarer - taste, a finer relish, a stronger confidence in himself and them. Yet, - in dealing with absolutes in life and time, he is ‘scrupulously dry.’ - This, I take it, is to be a man of letters. - -Footnote 3: - - Or rather bedgown: unction-soiled and laudanum-stained. - -Footnote 4: - - John Hazlitt had been a pupil of Reynolds, and his miniatures were - welcome at the Academy. - -Footnote 5: - - Dans l’art il faut donner sa peau. - -Footnote 6: - - He had a painter in him, whether imperfectly developed or not; for he - would condescend upon none but Guido, Raphael, Titian. - -Footnote 7: - - One was a likeness of his father, of which he has written in eloquent - and engaging terms; another, a _Wordsworth_, which he destroyed; a - third, the picture of Elia, ‘as a Venetian senator,’ now in the - National Portrait Gallery; yet another, the presentment of an Old - Woman, which is likened to a Rembrandt. Having seen none of these - things, all I can say about them is that Hazlitt seems to have been - passionately interested in colour; that he loved a picture because it - was a piece of painting; and, if he knew not always bad (or rather - third and fourth rate) work when he saw it, was as contemptuous of it, - when he realised its status, as Fuseli himself. - -Footnote 8: - - There is an immense, even an insuperable difference between the two - sorts of sensualists. To take an immediate instance: Lamb loved - Hogarth, and found emotions in him, because he (Hogarth) was a - novelist in paint; while Titian’s _Bacchus and Ariadne_ touched his - sense of letters, and, as Mr. Ainger has noted, suggested to him so - much literature, or, at all events, so many literary possibilities, - that Titian could not but be an arch-painter. Hazlitt felt his painter - first, and thought not of the man-of-letters in his painter till his - interest in his painter’s painting was—I won’t say extinguished - but—allayed. - -Footnote 9: - - ‘The point in debate,’ he says, ‘the worth or the bad quality of the - painting ... I am as well able to decide upon as any who ever - brandished a pallette.’ I doubt not that he spoke the truth; yet the - residuum of his criticisms of pictures, their after-taste, is mostly - literary. And, as he was finally a man of letters, what else could one - expect? - -Footnote 10: - - Leigh Hunt said that he was the best art critic that ever lived: that - to read him was like seeing a picture through stained glass, and so - forth. But Leigh Hunt knew not much more about pictures than Coleridge - knew about the books he talked of, but had not read. - -Footnote 11: - - The house had been the abode of Milton; for certain months it had - harboured the eminent James Mill; it belonged to the celebrated Jeremy - Bentham: so that in the matter of associations Hazlitt, a - thorough-paced dissenter, was as well off as he could hope to be. - -Footnote 12: - - Ten in number: on ‘The Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy,’ as - illustrated in the works of Hobbes, Locke and his followers, Hartley, - Helvétius, and others. The lectures, Mr. Stephen says, were in part a - reproduction of the _Principles of Human Action_. - -Footnote 13: - - Haydon says that Waterloo made him drunk for weeks. Then he pulled - himself together, and for the rest of his life drank nothing but - strong tea. He had, however, no sort of sympathy with those who held - the ‘social glass’ to be Man’s safest introduction to the Pit. He only - said that liquor did not agree with him, and looked on cheerfully - while his friends—Lamb was as close as any—drank as they pleased. - -Footnote 14: - - Both the _Characters_ and the _English Poets_ were reviewed by Gifford - in the _Quarterly_. The style of these ‘reviews’ is abject; the - inspiration venal; the matter the very dirt of the mind. Gifford hated - Hazlitt for his politics, and set out to wither Hazlitt’s repute as a - man of letters. For the tremendous reprisal with which he was visited, - the reader is referred to the _Letter to William Gifford, Esq._, in - the first volume of the present Edition. If he find it over-savage: - probably, being of to-day, he will: let him turn to his _Quarterly_, - and consider, if he have the stomach, Gifford and the matter of - offence. - -Footnote 15: - - He lived to rejoice in the Revolution of July; but of the great - movement in the arts—of _Henri Trois et sa Cour_ and _Hernani_, of - Delacroix and Barye, of Géricault and Bonington and de Vigny, and the - rest of its heroes—he seems to have known nothing. That was his way. - The new did not exist for him. A dissenter by birth and conviction, he - yet cared only for the past, and the elder ‘glories of our blood and - state’ were to him, not shadows but, the sole substantial things he - could keep room for in the kingdom of his mind. - -Footnote 16: - - ’Tis a pleasure to remember that Lamb was with him to the end—was in - his death-chamber in the very article of mortality. We have all read - Carlyle on Lamb. The everlasting pity is that we shall never read - Hazlitt on Carlyle. - -Footnote 17: - - Him Shelley calls ‘a solemn and unsexual man.’ - -Footnote 18: - - Much as years afterwards, according to a certain Nicolardot, the - expertest of their kind were ‘on the list’ of old Ste.-Beuve. - -Footnote 19: - - His grandson describes him as ‘physically incapable’ of any but a - transient fidelity to anybody. - -Footnote 20: - - He confessed that one day he told it half a dozen times or so to - persons he had never seen before: once, twice over to the same - listener. - -Footnote 21: - - It cost Hazlitt a crown, perhaps less; and he arranged—apparently with - Mrs. Hazlitt—to be taken in the act! After this the knowledge that Mr. - and Mrs. Hazlitt took tea together, _pendente lite_, and that then and - after his second espousals Hazlitt supplied this very reasonable woman - with money, astonishes no more, but comes as a kind of anticlimax. - -Footnote 22: - - That damsel presently married in her station. She seems to have been a - decent woman according to her lights, and to have lived up honestly to - her ideals, such as they were. - -Footnote 23: - - There was a laughing devil in his sneer - That raised emotions both of rage and fear; - And where his frown of hatred darkly fell, - Hope, withering, fled—and Mercy sighed farewell. - -Footnote 24: - - These details are Patmore’s, and, even if they be true, are not the - whole truth. Hazlitt loved solitude and the country, had to write for - a living, wrote with difficulty, and left no inconsiderable body of - work. - -Footnote 25: - - What I mean is, that I have heard the best, as I believe, the last of - the old century and the first of the new have shown. - -Footnote 26: - - ‘He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the - evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his - best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent - things in half a dozen half-sentences as he does. His jests scald like - tears: and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, - laughing, hare-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom!’ - -Footnote 27: - - It filled the valley like a mist, - And still poured out its endless chant, - And still it swells upon the ear, - And wraps me in a golden trance, - Drowning the noisy tumult of the world. - - . . . . . . - - Like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove ... - Contending with the wild winds as they roar ... - And the proud places of the insolent - And the oppressor fell ... - Such and so little is the mind of Man! - -Footnote 28: - - His summary of the fight between Hickman and Bill Neate is alone in - literature, as also in the annals of the Ring. Jon Bee was an - intelligent creature of his kind, and knew a very great deal more - about pugilism than Hazlitt knew; but to contrast the two is to learn - much. Badcock (which is Jon Bee) had seen (and worshipped) Jem - Belcher, and had reported fights with an extreme contempt for Pierce - Egan, the illiterate ass who gave us _Boxiana_. Hazlitt, however, - looked on at the proceedings of Neate and the Gaslight Man exactly as - he had looked on at divers creations of Edmund Kean. He saw the - essentials in both expressions of human activity, and his treatment of - both is fundamentally the same. In both he ignores the trivial: here - the acting (in its lowest sense), there the hits that did not count. - And thus, as he gives you only the vital touches, you know how and why - Neate beat Hickman, and can tell the exact moment at which Hickman - began to be a beaten man. ’Tis the same with his panegyric on - Cavanagh, the fives-player. For a blend of gusto with understanding I - know but one thing to equal with this: the note on Dr. Grace, which - appeared in _The National Observer_; and the night that that was - written, I sent the writer back to Hazlitt’s _Cavanagh_, and said to - him ——! On the whole the _Dr. Grace_ is the better of the two. But it - has scarce the incorruptible fatness of the _Cavanagh_. Gusto, though, - is Hazlitt’s special attribute: he glories in what he likes, what he - reads, what he feels, what he writes. He triumphed in his Kean, his - Shakespeare, his Bill Neate, his Rousseau, his coffee-and-cream and - _Love for Love_ in the inn-parlour at Alton. He relished things; and - expressed them with a relish. That is his ‘note.’ Some others have - relished only the consummate expression of nothing. - -Footnote 29: - - Listen, else, to Lamb himself: ‘Protesting against much that he has - written, and some things which he chooses to do; judging him by his - conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by - his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes, I - should belie my own conscience if I said less than that I think W. H. - to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest - spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy which - was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to - have preserved it entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without - finding or expecting to find such another companion.’ Thus does one - Royalty celebrate the kingship and enrich the immortality of another. - - - - - EDITORS’ PREFACE - - -Two previous editions of Hazlitt’s works have been published: the -Templeman edition, edited by the author’s son, and the seven volume -edition in Bohn’s Library, edited by the author’s grandson, Mr. W. Carew -Hazlitt. Valuable as these editions are from the exceptional advantages -enjoyed by the respective editors, neither of them professes to be, or -is, complete, and the aim of the present edition is to give for the -first time an accurate text of the complete collected writings of -Hazlitt with the exception of his _Life of Napoleon_. - -In the case of works published in book form by Hazlitt himself the -latest edition published in his lifetime is here reprinted. Some obvious -errors of the press have been corrected, but no attempt has been made to -modernise or improve Hazlitt’s orthography or punctuation. He himself -expressed contempt for ‘the collating of points and commas,’ and was -probably a careless proof reader. He did not plume himself, as Boswell -did, upon a deliberately adopted orthography, and his punctuation and -use of italics were perhaps rather his printers’ fancy than his own. -However that may be, the Editors feel that there is no justification for -any tampering with his text. Essays not republished by Hazlitt himself -are printed from the periodical or other publication in which they first -appeared. - -It has been found impossible to avoid a good deal of repetition. All -readers of Hazlitt know that he repeated not only phrases and sentences, -but paragraphs and pages, as, _e.g._, in the case of the essay on ‘The -Character of Pitt’ (see note to p. 125). A few of such cases might have -been dealt with by means of cross references, but they are so numerous -that the cross references would have become tiresome if only one of the -identical or nearly identical passages had been printed. - -The notes chiefly contain bibliographical matter, concise biographical -details of some of the persons mentioned by Hazlitt, and references to -quotations. They also include several passages which Hazlitt omitted -from his essays when he came to republish them in book form. Some of -these are in themselves worthy of preservation; some help to explain the -ferocity of certain contemporary allusions; and it is at any rate -interesting to compare what he rejected with what he retained in moments -of reflection. - -One word is necessary here as to the course which has been adopted with -Hazlitt’s very numerous and very inaccurate quotations. In many cases -his quotations are simply and unintentionally inaccurate, but very often -he misquotes (if so it can be called) on purpose. That is to say, in his -masterful way he presses quotations into his service, and if they are -not exactly serviceable as they stand, he makes them so by changing a -word here and there, or by blending two or more quotations together. He -sometimes quotes (or misquotes) without using quotation marks, and the -Editors would fain believe that he sometimes uses quotation marks to -round off some unusually happy phrase of his own. The variations between -Hazlitt and his original are given in the notes where it seemed -desirable that they should be given, but in no case have his quotations -been corrected or altered in the _text_. - -It has been a pleasure to the Editors to have the sympathy and -co-operation of Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, and they desire to thank him for -his valuable assistance. At the same time they accept entire -responsibility for the errors and failings which may be found in their -work. - - A. R. W. - A. G. - - - - - THE ROUND TABLE - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - _The Round Table_ was published in two 12mo volumes in 1817. The - title-page runs as follows: ‘The Round Table: A Collection of Essays - on Literature, Men, and Manners, By William Hazlitt. Edinburgh: - Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. And Longman, Hurst, Rees, - Orme, and Brown, London, 1817.’ Twelve of the fifty-two numbers were - by Leigh Hunt, as the Advertisement explains. The essays consisted - for the most part, but not entirely, of papers contributed to _The - Examiner_ under the title of ‘The Round Table’ between January 1, - 1815, and January 5, 1817. Hazlitt, however, included several essays - taken from other columns of _The Examiner_ and from _The Morning - Chronicle_ and other sources, and did not include the whole of his - contributions to the Round Table series. A ‘third’ edition, edited - by the author’s son, was published in one 12mo volume in 1841. In - this edition many essays were omitted which had appeared, or were - intended to appear, in the series of Hazlitt’s works then being - published by Templeman; three essays contributed by Hazlitt to _The - Liberal_ in 1822 were added; and Leigh Hunt’s essays were retained. - Hazlitt’s essays as published in the two volumes of 1817 were - restored, and Leigh Hunt’s essays were for the first time omitted in - a later edition (8vo, 1871) edited by the author’s grandson, Mr. W. - C. Hazlitt. The present edition is an exact reproduction of - Hazlitt’s essays from the edition of 1817, except that a few obvious - printer’s errors have been corrected. Of the contributions made by - Hazlitt to the Round Table series in _The Examiner_ and not included - in the two volumes of 1817 some were used by him in other - publications, _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_ (1817) and - _Political Essays_ (1819), some were published in the posthumous - _Winterslow_ (1850), and some have not been hitherto republished. - The source of each of the following essays is indicated in the - Notes. Gifford’s review of _The Round Table_ in _The Quarterly - Review_ for April 1817 is dealt with by the author in _A Letter to - William Gifford, Esq._, which is included in this volume. - - - ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EDITION OF 1817 - -The following work falls somewhat short of its title and original -intention. It was proposed by my friend, Mr. Hunt, to publish a series -of papers in the Examiner, in the manner of the early periodical -Essayists, the Spectator and Tatler. These papers were to be contributed -by various persons on a variety of subjects; and Mr. Hunt, as the -Editor, was to take the characteristic or dramatic part of the work upon -himself. I undertook to furnish occasional Essays and Criticisms; one or -two other friends promised their assistance; but the essence of the work -was to be miscellaneous. The next thing was to fix upon a title for it. -After much doubtful consultation, that of THE ROUND TABLE was agreed -upon as most descriptive of its nature and design. But our plan had been -no sooner arranged and entered upon, than Buonaparte landed at Frejus, -_et voila la Table Ronde dissoute_. Our little congress was broken up as -well as the great one; Politics called off the attention of the Editor -from the _Belles Lettres_; and the task of continuing the work fell -chiefly upon the person who was least able to give life and spirit to -the original design. A want of variety in the subjects and mode of -treating them, is, perhaps, the least disadvantage resulting from this -circumstance. All the papers, in the two volumes here offered to the -public, were written by myself and Mr. Hunt, except a letter -communicated by a friend in the seventeenth number. Out of the fifty-two -numbers, twelve are Mr. Hunt’s, with the signatures L. H. or H. T. For -all the rest I am answerable. - - W. HAZLITT. - - _January 5, 1817._ - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - - On the Love of Life 1 - - On Classical Education 4 - - On the Tatler 7 - - On Modern Comedy 10 - - On Mr. Kean’s Iago 14 - - On the Love of the Country 17 - - On Posthumous Fame.—Whether Shakspeare was influenced by a Love - of it? 21 - - On Hogarth’s Marriage a-la-mode 25 - - The Subject continued 28 - - On Milton’s Lycidas 31 - - On Milton’s Versification 36 - - On Manner 41 - - On the Tendency of Sects 47 - - On John Buncle 51 - - On the Causes of Methodism 57 - - On the Midsummer Night’s Dream 61 - - On the Beggar’s Opera 65 - - On Patriotism—A Fragment 67 - - On Beauty 68 - - On Imitation 72 - - On _Gusto_ 77 - - On Pedantry 80 - - The same Subject continued 84 - - On the Character of Rousseau 88 - - On Different Sorts of Fame 93 - - Character of John Bull 97 - - On Good-Nature 100 - - On the Character of Milton’s Eve 105 - - Observations on Mr. Wordsworth’s Poem The Excursion 111 - - The same Subject continued 120 - - Character of the late Mr. Pitt 125 - - On Religious Hypocrisy 128 - - On the Literary Character 131 - - On Common-place Critics 136 - - On the Catalogue Raisonné of the British Institution 140 - - The same Subject continued 146 - - On Poetical Versatility 151 - - On Actors and Acting 153 - - On the Same 156 - - Why the Arts are not Progressive: A Fragment 160 - - - - - THE ROUND TABLE - - - NO. 1.] ON THE LOVE OF LIFE [JAN. 15, 1815. - -It is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to -expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our reasonings on -men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these, is that -which relates to the source of our general attachment to life. We are -not going to enter into the question, whether life is, on the whole, to -be regarded as a blessing, though we are by no means inclined to adopt -the opinion of that sage, who thought ‘that the best thing that could -have happened to a man was never to have been born, and the next best to -have died the moment after he came into existence.’ The common argument, -however, which is made use of to prove the value of life, from the -strong desire which almost every one feels for its continuance, appears -to be altogether inconclusive. The wise and the foolish, the weak and -the strong, the lame and the blind, the prisoner and the free, the -prosperous and the wretched, the beggar and the king, the rich and the -poor, the young and the old, from the little child who tries to leap -over his own shadow, to the old man who stumbles blindfold on his grave, -all feel this desire in common. Our notions with respect to the -importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle, -which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. - -The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but -of our passions. We are not attached to it so much for its own sake, or -as it is connected with happiness, as because it is necessary to action. -Without life there can be no action—no objects of pursuit—no restless -desires—no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to -it—that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of -hope. The proof that our attachment to life is not absolutely owing to -the immediate satisfaction we find in it, is, that those persons are -commonly found most loth to part with it who have the least enjoyment of -it, and who have the greatest difficulties to struggle with, as losing -gamesters are the most desperate. And farther, there are not many -persons who, with all their pretended love of life, would not, if it had -been in their power, have melted down the longest life to a few hours. -‘The school-boy,’ says Addison, ‘counts the time till the return of the -holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he -is married.’—‘Hope and fantastic expectations spend much of our lives; -and while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an -enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any -intermediate notices, we throw away a precious year’ (Jeremy Taylor). We -would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present -moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from -any favourite object. We chiefly look upon life, then, as the means to -an end. Its common enjoyments and its daily evils are alike disregarded -for any idle purpose we have in view. It should seem as if there were a -few green sunny spots in the desert of life, to which we are always -hastening forward: we eye them wistfully in the distance, and care not -what perils or suffering we endure, so that we arrive at them at last. -However weary we may be of the same stale round—however sick of the -past—however hopeless of the future—the mind still revolts at the -thought of death, because the fancied possibility of good, which always -remains with life, gathers strength as it is about to be torn from us -for ever, and the dullest scene looks bright compared with the darkness -of the grave. Our reluctance to part with existence evidently does not -depend on the calm and even current of our lives, but on the force and -impulse of the passions. Hence that indifference to death which has been -sometimes remarked in people who lead a solitary and peaceful life in -remote and barren districts. The pulse of life in them does not beat -strong enough to occasion any violent revulsion of the frame when it -ceases. He who treads the green mountain turf, or he who sleeps beneath -it, enjoys an almost equal quiet. The death of those persons has always -been accounted happy, who had attained their utmost wishes, who had -nothing left to regret or to desire. Our repugnance to death increases -in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain—to the -violence of our efforts, and the keenness of our disappointments—and to -our earnest desire to find in the future, if possible, a rich amends for -the past. We may be said to nurse our existence with the greatest -tenderness, according to the pain it has cost us; and feel at every step -of our varying progress the truth of that line of the poet— - - ‘An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour.’ - -The love of life is in fact the sum of all our passions and of all our -enjoyments; but these are by no means the same thing, for the vehemence -of our passions is irritated, not less by disappointment than by the -prospect of success. Nothing seems to be a match for this general -tenaciousness of existence, but such an extremity either of bodily or -mental suffering as destroys at once the power both of habit and -imagination. In short, the question, whether life is accompanied with a -greater quantity of pleasure or pain, may be fairly set aside as -frivolous, and of no practical utility; for our attachment to life -depends on our interest in it; and it cannot be denied that we have more -interest in this moving, busy scene, agitated with a thousand hopes and -fears, and checkered with every diversity of joy and sorrow, than in a -dreary blank. To be something is better than to be nothing, because we -can feel no interest in _nothing_. Passion, imagination, self-will, the -sense of power, the very consciousness of our existence, bind us to -life, and hold us fast in its chains, as by a magic spell, in spite of -every other consideration. Nothing can be more philosophical than the -reasoning which Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel:— - - ‘And that must end us, that must be our cure, - To be no more; Sad cure: For who would lose, - Though full of pain, this intellectual being, - Those thoughts that wander through eternity, - To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost - In the wide womb of uncreated night, - Devoid of sense and motion?’ - -Nearly the same account may be given in answer to the question which has -been asked, _Why so few tyrants kill themselves?_ In the first place, -they are never satisfied with the mischief they have done, and cannot -quit their hold of power, after all sense of pleasure is fled. Besides, -they absurdly argue from the means of happiness placed within their -reach to the end itself; and, dazzled by the pomp and pageantry of a -throne, cannot relinquish the persuasion that they _ought_ to be happier -than other men. The prejudice of opinion, which attaches us to life, is -in them stronger than in others, and incorrigible to experience. The -Great are life’s fools—dupes of the splendid shadows that surround them, -and wedded to the very mockeries of opinion. - -Whatever is our situation or pursuit in life, the result will be much -the same. The strength of the passion seldom corresponds to the pleasure -we find in its indulgence. The miser ‘robs himself to increase his -store’; the ambitious man toils up a slippery precipice only to be -tumbled headlong from its height: the lover is infatuated with the -charms of his mistress, exactly in proportion to the mortifications he -has received from her. Even those who succeed in nothing, who, as it has -been emphatically expressed— - - ‘Are made desperate by too quick a sense - Of constant infelicity; cut off - From peace like exiles, on some barren rock, - Their life’s sad prison, with no more of ease, - Than sentinels between two armies set’; - -are yet as unwilling as others to give over the unprofitable strife: -their harassed feverish existence refuses rest, and frets the languor of -exhausted hope into the torture of unavailing regret. The exile, who has -been unexpectedly restored to his country and to liberty, often finds -his courage fail with the accomplishment of all his wishes, and the -struggle of life and hope ceases at the same instant. - -We once more repeat, that we do not, in the foregoing remarks, mean to -enter into a comparative estimate of the value of human life, but merely -to shew that the strength of our attachment to it is a very fallacious -test of its happiness. - - W. H. - - - NO. 2.] ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION [FEB. 12, 1815. - -The study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exercise of the -intellect, than as ‘a discipline of humanity.’ The peculiar advantage of -this mode of education consists not so much in strengthening the -understanding, as in softening and refining the taste. It gives men -liberal views; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things -foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own sake; to prefer fame to -life, and glory to riches; and to fix our thoughts on the remote and -permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to -believe that there is something really great and excellent in the world, -surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and -raises us above that low and servile fear, which bows only to present -power and upstart authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the -history of mankind, which can never be occupied again. They were two -cities set on a hill, which could not be hid; all eyes have seen them, -and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time. - - ‘Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, - Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; - Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage, - Destructive war, and all-involving age. - - Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, - Immortal heirs of universal praise! - Whose honours with increase of ages grow, - As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!’ - -It is this feeling, more than anything else, which produces a marked -difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and -which, from the weight and importance of the consequences attached to -the former, stamps every word with a monumental firmness. By conversing -with the _mighty dead_, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge; we become -strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, -except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the -presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and -actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. - -It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed, either a real love of -excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their -own. Everything is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas -and pursuits. Persons without education certainly do not want either -acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things -immediately within their observation; but they have no power of -abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see -their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that -egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught -men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice or petulant -fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity -of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first -opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to -conviction; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are -everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and -the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive discovery -flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact -overturns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose -ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find -partizans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and -who unite the most hardened effrontery, and intolerance of opinion, to -endless inconsistency and self-contradiction. - -A celebrated political writer of the present day, who is a great enemy -to classical education, is a remarkable instance both of what can and -what cannot be done without it. - -It has been attempted of late to set up a distinction between the -education _of words_, and the education _of things_, and to give the -preference in all cases to the latter. But, in the first place, the -knowledge of things, or of the realities of life, is not easily to be -taught except by things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so -absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed. ‘The world is too much -with us, early and late’; and the fine dream of our youth is best -prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity. We owe many of our -most amiable delusions, and some of our superiority, to the grossness of -mere physical existence, to the strength of our associations with words. -Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and -refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked -objects. There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In the -next place, we mean absolutely to deny the application of the principle -of utility to the present question. By an obvious transposition of -ideas, some persons have confounded a knowledge of useful things with -useful knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself, as it exercises or -gives pleasure to the mind: the only knowledge that is of use in a -practical sense, is professional knowledge. But knowledge, considered as -a branch of general education, can be of use only to the mind of the -person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language produces pedants, the -other kind of knowledge (which is proposed to be substituted for it) can -only produce quacks. There is no question, but that the knowledge of -astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly useful to the -world, and absolutely necessary to be acquired by persons carrying on -certain professions: but the practical utility of a knowledge of these -subjects ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance to the -navigator to know exactly in what degree of longitude and latitude such -a rock lies: but to us, sitting here about our Round Table, it is not of -the smallest consequence whatever, whether the map-maker has placed it -an inch to the right or to the left; we are in no danger of running -against it. So the art of making shoes is a highly useful art, and very -proper to be known and practised by some body: that is, by the -shoemaker. But to pretend that every one else should be thoroughly -acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious handicraft, as one -branch of useful knowledge, would be preposterous. It is sometimes -asked, What is the use of poetry? and we have heard the argument carried -on almost like a parody on _Falstaff’s_ reasoning about Honour. ‘Can it -set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. -Poetry hath no skill in surgery then? No.’ It is likely that the most -enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the truth of this -statement, that if he had just broken a leg, he would send for a -surgeon, instead of a volume of poems from a library. But, ‘they that -are whole need not a physician.’ The reasoning would be well founded, if -we lived in an hospital, and not in the world. - - W. H. - - - NO. 3.] ON THE TATLER [MARCH 5, 1815. - -Of all the periodical Essayists, (our ingenious predecessors), the -_Tatler_ has always appeared to us the most accomplished and agreeable. -Montaigne, who was the father of this kind of personal authorship among -the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and -sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most -magnanimous and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was the -more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to -describe the peculiarities of his own mind and person, which he does -with a most copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist, -good-naturedly, lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and -those of his neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple Bar, -cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff -takes due notice of it; and he has the first intelligence of the -symptoms of the _belle_ passion appearing in any young gentleman at the -west end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with -handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to -procure a second husband in town, are regularly recorded in his pages. -He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the last age at -the Court of Charles II. and the old gentleman often grows romantic in -recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered from the -glances of their bright eyes and their unaccountable caprices. In -particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on one of his -mistresses who left him for a rival, and whose constant reproach to her -husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was,—‘I, that might -have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!’ -The club at the _Trumpet_ consists of a set of persons as entertaining -as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the -shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who -waited on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to -have settled the order of their precedence to this hour; and we should -hope the Upholsterer and his companions in the Green Park stand as fair -a chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff -himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist and a man of the -world; with a great deal of nice easy _naïveté_ about him. If he walks -out and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes us amends for this -unlucky accident, by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes -with a burlesque copy of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when -he dates from his own apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch or a -moral reflection; from the Grecian coffeehouse with politics; and from -Will’s or the Temple with the poets and players, the beaux and men of -wit and pleasure about town. In reading the pages of the _Tatler_, we -seem as if suddenly transported to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and -full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners -undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. We are surprised with the rustling -of hoops and the glittering of paste buckles. The beaux and the belles -are of a quite different species; we distinguish the dappers, the -smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass; we are introduced to -Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes; are made familiar with -the persons of Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock; we listen to a dispute at -a tavern on the merits of the Duke of Marlborough or Marshal Turenne; or -are present at the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading -of a new poem by Mr. Pope.—The privilege of thus virtually transporting -ourselves to past times, is even greater than that of visiting distant -places. London, a hundred years ago, would be better worth seeing than -Paris at the present moment. - -It may be said that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater -degree, in the _Spectator_. We do not think so; or, at least, there is -in the last work a much greater proportion of common-place matter. We -have always preferred the _Tatler_ to the _Spectator_. Whether it is -owing to our having been earlier or better acquainted with the one than -the other, our pleasure in reading the two works is not at all in -proportion to their comparative reputation. The _Tatler_ contains only -half the number of volumes, and we will venture to say, at least an -equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. ‘The first sprightly runnings’ -are there: it has more of the original spirit, more of the freshness and -stamp of nature. The indications of character and strokes of humour are -more true and frequent, the reflections that suggest themselves arise -more from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular -dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible -conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to the -understanding of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his closet -only to set down what he observed out-of-doors; Addison seems to have -spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed from Steele, or -took from nature, to the utmost. We do not mean to depreciate Addison’s -talents, but we wish to do justice to Steele, who was, upon the whole, a -less artificial and more original writer. The descriptions of Steele -resemble loose sketches or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are -ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, -not only in the _Tatler_, but in the _Spectator_, were drawn by Steele. -That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among them. Addison has gained himself -eternal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Those of -Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind it in delicacy and -felicity. Many of the most exquisite pieces in the _Tatler_ are also -Addison’s, as the Court of Honour, and the Personification of Musical -Instruments. We do not know whether the picture of the family of an old -acquaintance, in which the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the -door, and the one that loses the race that way turns back to tell the -father that he is come,—with the nice gradation of incredulity in the -little boy, who is got into _Guy of Warwick_ and _The Seven Champions_, -and who shakes his head at the veracity of _Æsop’s Fables_,—is Steele’s -or Addison’s.[30] The account of the two sisters, one of whom held her -head up higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, -and of the married lady who complained to the _Tatler_ of the neglect of -her husband, are unquestionably Steele’s. If the _Tatler_ is not -inferior to the _Spectator_ in manners and character, it is very -superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several of the -incidents related by Steele have never been surpassed in the -heart-rending pathos of private distress. We might refer to those of the -lover and his mistress when the theatre caught fire, of the bridegroom -who, by accident, kills his bride on the day of their marriage, the -story of Mr. Eustace and his wife, and the fine dream about his own -mistress when a youth. What has given its superior popularity to the -_Spectator_, is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral -dissertations and critical reasonings, by which we confess we are less -edified than by other things. Systems and opinions change, but nature is -always true. It is the extremely moral and didactic tone of the -_Spectator_ which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to -Mandeville’s sarcasm) as ‘a parson in a tie-wig.’ Some of the moral -essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and happy. Such are the -reflections in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and some very -affecting ones on the death of a young lady. These, it must be allowed, -are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical essays we do not -think quite so good. We prefer Steele’s occasional selection of -beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing their -beauties, to Addison’s fine-spun theories. The best criticism in the -_Spectator_, that on the _Cartoons_ of Raphael, is by Steele. We owed -this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put us in good humour -with ourselves and every thing about us, when few things else could.[31] - - W. H. - - - NO. 4.] ON MODERN COMEDY [AUG. 20, 1815. - -The question which has often been asked, _Why there are so few good -modern Comedies?_ appears in a great measure to answer itself. It is -because so many excellent Comedies have been written, that there are -none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out—destroys the -very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing -the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves -itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to nature; and -men, seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects pass in gay -review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the -criticism which the public taste exercises upon the stage, but the -criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is fatal -to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct, and -spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to -wear the same dull uniform of outward appearance; and yet it is asked, -why the Comic Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities -of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque contrast of our -dress and costume, in all that graceful variety in which she delights. -The genuine source of comic writing, - - ‘Where it must live, or have no life at all,’ - -is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing peculiarities of men -and manners. Now, this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong, -pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are -formed immediately by their particular circumstances, and the characters -of individuals by their natural temperament and situation, without being -everlastingly modified and neutralised by intercourse with the world—by -knowledge and education. In a certain stage of society, men may be said -to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil in which they -grow. They have no idea of anything beyond themselves and their -immediate sphere of action; they are, as it were, circumscribed, and -defined by their particular circumstances; they are what their situation -makes them, and nothing more. Each is absorbed in his own profession or -pursuit, and each in his turn contracts that habitual peculiarity of -manners and opinions, which makes him the subject of ridicule to others, -and the sport of the Comic Muse. Thus the physician is nothing but a -physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar degenerates into a -pedant, the country squire is a different species of being from the fine -gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit a different world, and -even the affectation of certain characters, in aping the follies or -vices of their betters, only serves to show the immeasurable distance -which custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence the early comic -writers, taking advantage of this mixed and solid mass of ignorance, -folly, pride, and prejudice, made those deep and lasting incisions into -it,—have given those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to their -characters,—have opposed them in every variety of contrast and -collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual antipathy, with a -power which can only find full scope in the same rich and inexhaustible -materials. But in proportion as comic genius succeeds in taking off the -mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us to - - ‘See ourselves as others see us,’— - -in proportion as we are brought out on the stage together, and our -prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp angular points wear -off; we are no longer rigid in absurdity, passionate in folly, and we -prevent the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles, by laughing at -them ourselves. - -If it be said, that there is the same fund of absurdity and prejudice in -the world as ever—that there are the same unaccountable perversities -lurking at the bottom of every breast,—I should answer, be it so: but at -least we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible—we palliate, -shuffle, and equivocate with them—they sneak into by-corners, and do -not, like _Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims_, march along the highroad, and -form a procession—they do not entrench themselves strongly behind custom -and precedent—they are not embodied in professions and ranks in -life—they are not organised into a system—they do not openly resort to a -standard, but are a sort of straggling nondescripts, that, like _Wart_, -‘present no mark to the foeman.’ As to the gross and palpable -absurdities of modern manners, they are too shallow and barefaced, and -those who affect, are too little _serious_ in them, to make them worth -the detection of the Comic Muse. They proceed from an idle, impudent -affectation of folly in general, in the dashing _bravura_ style, not -from an infatuation with any of its characteristic modes. In short, the -proper object of ridicule is _egotism_; and a man cannot be a very great -egotist who every day sees himself represented on the stage. We are -deficient in Comedy, because we are without characters in real life—as -we have no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for -them. - -It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalise and -_dissipate_ character, by giving men the same artificial education, and -the same common stock of ideas; so that we see all objects from the same -point of view, and through the same reflected medium;—we learn to exist, -not in ourselves, but in books;—all men become alike mere -readers—spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose all proper -personal identity. The templar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the -man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire, -the lover and the miser—_Lovelace_, _Lothario_, _Will Honeycomb_, and -_Sir Roger de Coverley_, _Sparkish_ and _Lord Foppington_, _Western_ and -_Tom Jones_, _My Father_, and _My Uncle Toby_, _Millamant_ and _Sir -Sampson Legend_, _Don Quixote_ and _Sancho_, _Gil Blas_ and _Guzman -d’Alfarache_, _Count Fathom_ and _Joseph Surface_,—have all met, and -exchanged common-places on the barren plains of the _haute -littérature_—toil slowly on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way -off upon a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criticism, -chemistry, and metaphysics! - -We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If, for example, any of -us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London, -it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd -accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befell _Parson -Adams_; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the -conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of -adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach: our -limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow -drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad -accident, at our journey’s end. - -Again, the alterations which have taken place in conversation and dress -in the same period, have been by no means favourable to Comedy. The -present prevailing style of conversation is not _personal_, but critical -and analytical. It consists almost entirely in the discussion of general -topics, in dissertations on philosophy or taste: and Congreve would be -able to derive no better hints from the conversations of our toilettes -or drawing-rooms, for the exquisite raillery or poignant repartee of his -dialogues, than from a deliberation of the Royal Society. In the same -manner, the extreme simplicity and graceful uniformity of modern dress, -however favourable to the arts, has certainly stript Comedy of one of -its richest ornaments and most expressive symbols. The sweeping pall and -buskin, and nodding plume, were never more serviceable to Tragedy, than -the enormous hoops and stiff stays worn by the belles of former days -were to the intrigues of Comedy. They assisted wonderfully in -heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to the intricacy of -the plot. Wycherley and Vanbrugh could not have spared the dresses of -Vandyke. These strange fancy-dresses, perverse disguises, and -counterfeit shapes, gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. ‘That -sevenfold fence’ was a sort of foil to the lusciousness of the dialogue, -and a barrier against the sly encroachments of _double entendre_. The -greedy eye and bold hand of indiscretion were repressed, which gave a -greater licence to the tongue. The senses were not to be gratified in an -instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling handkerchief, -and the desires might wander for ever round the circumference of a -quilted petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a damask -stomacher. There was room for years of patient contrivance, for a -thousand thoughts, schemes, conjectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There -seemed no end of difficulties and delays; to overcome so many obstacles -was the work of ages. A mistress was an angel concealed behind -whalebone, flounces, and brocade. What an undertaking to penetrate -through the disguise! What an impulse must it give to the blood, what a -keenness to the invention, what a volubility to the tongue! ‘Mr. Smirk, -you are a brisk man,’ was then the most significant commendation. But -now-a-days—a woman can be _but undressed_! - -The same account might be extended to Tragedy. Aristotle has long since -said, that Tragedy purifies the mind by terror and pity; that is, -substitutes an artificial and intellectual interest for real passion. -Tragedy, like Comedy, must therefore defeat itself; for its patterns -must be drawn from the living models within the breast, from feeling or -from observation; and the materials of Tragedy cannot be found among a -people, who are the habitual spectators of Tragedy, whose interests and -passions are not their own, but ideal, remote, sentimental, and -abstracted. It is for this reason chiefly, we conceive, that the highest -efforts of the Tragic Muse are in general the earliest; where the strong -impulses of nature are not lost in the refinements and glosses of art; -where the writers themselves, and those whom they saw about them, had -‘warm hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms, and were not -embowelled of their natural entrails, and stuffed with paltry blurred -sheets of paper.’ Shakspeare, with all his genius, could not have -written as he did, if he had lived in the present times. Nature would -not have presented itself to him in the same freshness and vigour; he -must have seen it through all the refractions of successive dullness, -and his powers would have languished in the dense atmosphere of logic -and criticism. ‘Men’s minds,’ he somewhere says, ‘are parcel of their -fortunes’; and his age was necessary to him. It was this which enabled -him to grapple at once with Nature, and which stamped his characters -with her image and superscription. - - W. H. - - - NO. 5.] ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO [JULY 24, 1814. - -We certainly think Mr. Kean’s performance of the part of Iago one of the -most extraordinary exhibitions on the stage. There is no one within our -remembrance who has so completely foiled the critics as this celebrated -actor: one sagacious person imagines that he must perform a part in a -certain manner,—another virtuoso chalks out a different path for him; -and when the time comes, he does the whole off in a way that neither of -them had the least conception of, and which both of them are therefore -very ready to condemn as entirely wrong. It was ever the trick of genius -to be thus. We confess that Mr. Kean has thrown us out more than once. -For instance, we are very much inclined to adopt the opinion of a -contemporary critic, that his _Richard_ is not gay enough, and that his -_Iago_ is not grave enough. This he may perhaps conceive to be the mere -caprice of idle criticism; but we will try to give our reasons, and -shall leave them to Mr. Kean’s better judgment. It is to be remembered, -then, that _Richard_ was a princely villain, borne along in a sort of -triumphal car of royal state, buoyed up with the hopes and privileges of -his birth, reposing even on the sanctity of religion, trampling on his -devoted victims without remorse, and who looked out and laughed from the -high watch-tower of his confidence and his expectations on the -desolation and misery he had caused around him. He held on his way, -unquestioned, ‘hedged in with the divinity of kings,’ amenable to no -tribunal, and abusing his power _in contempt of mankind_. But as for -_Iago_, we conceive differently of him. He had not the same natural -advantages. He was a mere adventurer in mischief, a pains-taking -plodding knave, without patent or pedigree, who was obliged to work his -up-hill way by wit, not by will, and to be the founder of his own -fortune. He was, if we may be allowed a vulgar allusion, a sort of -prototype of modern Jacobinism, who thought that talents ought to decide -the place,—a man of ‘morbid sensibility,’ (in the fashionable phrase), -full of distrust, of hatred, of anxious and corroding thoughts, and who, -though he might assume a temporary superiority over others by superior -adroitness, and pride himself in his skill, could not be supposed to -assume it as a matter of course, as if he had been entitled to it from -his birth. We do not here mean to enter into the characters of the two -men, but something must be allowed to the difference of their -situations. There might be the same insensibility in both as to the end -in view, but there could not well be the same security as to the success -of the means. _Iago_ had to pass through a different ordeal: he had no -appliances and means to boot; no royal road to the completion of his -tragedy. His pretensions were not backed by authority; they were not -baptized at the font; they were not holy-waterproof. He had the whole to -answer for in his own person, and could not shift the responsibility to -the heads of others. Mr. Kean’s _Richard_ was, therefore, we think, -deficient in something of that regal jollity and reeling triumph of -success which the part would bear; but this we can easily account for, -because it is the traditional commonplace idea of the character, that he -is to ‘play the dog—to bite and snarl.’—The extreme unconcern and -laboured levity of his _Iago_, on the contrary, is a refinement and -original device of the actor’s own mind, and therefore deserves -consideration. The character of _Iago_, in fact, belongs to a class of -characters common to Shakspeare, and at the same time peculiar to -him—namely, that of great intellectual activity, accompanied with a -total want of moral principle, and therefore displaying itself at the -constant expence of others, making use of reason as a pander to -will—employing its ingenuity and its resources to palliate its own -crimes and aggravate the faults of others, and seeking to confound the -practical distinctions of right and wrong, by referring them to some -overstrained standard of speculative refinement.—Some persons, more nice -than wise, have thought the whole of the character of _Iago_ unnatural. -Shakspeare, who was quite as good a philosopher as he was a poet, -thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name -for the love of mischief, was natural to man. He would know this as well -or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram, -merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt, or kill flies for sport. -We might ask those who think the character of _Iago_ not natural, why -they go to see it performed, but from the interest it excites, the -sharper edge which it sets on their curiosity and imagination? Why do we -go to see tragedies in general? Why do we always read the accounts in -the newspapers of dreadful fires and shocking murders, but for the same -reason? Why do so many persons frequent executions and trials, or why do -the lower classes almost universally take delight in barbarous sports -and cruelty to animals, but because there is a natural tendency in the -mind to strong excitement, a desire to have its faculties roused and -stimulated to the utmost? Whenever this principle is not under the -restraint of humanity, or the sense of moral obligation, there are no -excesses to which it will not of itself give rise, without the -assistance of any other motive, either of passion or self-interest. -_Iago_ is only an extreme instance of the kind; that is, of diseased -intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good -or evil, or rather with a preference of the latter, because it falls -more in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his -thoughts, and scope to his actions.—Be it observed, too, (for the sake -of those who are for squaring all human actions by the maxims of -Rochefoucault), that he is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own -fate as to that of others; that he runs all risks for a trifling and -doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling -passion—an incorrigible love of mischief—an insatiable craving after -action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Our ‘Ancient’ is a -philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than -an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the -peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the -heart of a flea in an air-pump; who plots the ruin of his friends as an -exercise for his understanding, and stabs men in the dark to prevent -_ennui_. Now this, though it be sport, yet it is dreadful sport. There -is no room for trifling and indifference, nor scarcely for the -appearance of it; the very object of his whole plot is to keep his -faculties stretched on the rack, in a state of watch and ward, in a sort -of breathless suspense, without a moment’s interval of repose. He has a -desperate stake to play for, like a man who fences with poisoned -weapons, and has business enough on his hands to call for the whole -stock of his sober circumspection, his dark duplicity, and insidious -gravity. He resembles a man who sits down to play at chess, for the sake -of the difficulty and complication of the game, and who immediately -becomes absorbed in it. His amusements, if they are amusements, are -severe and saturnine—even his wit blisters. His gaiety arises from the -success of his treachery; his ease from the sense of the torture he has -inflicted on others. Even, if other circumstances permitted it, the part -he has to play with _Othello_ requires that he should assume the most -serious concern, and something of the plausibility of a confessor. ‘His -cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam.’ He is -repeatedly called ‘honest _Iago_,’ which looks as if there were -something suspicious in his appearance, which admitted a different -construction. The tone which he adopts in the scenes with _Roderigo_, -_Desdemona_, and _Cassio_, is only a relaxation from the more arduous -business of the play. Yet there is in all his conversation an inveterate -misanthropy, a licentious keenness of perception, which is always -sagacious of evil, and snuffs up the tainted scent of its quarry with -rancorous delight. An exuberance of spleen is the essence of the -character. The view which we have here taken of the subject (if at all -correct) will not therefore justify the extreme alteration which Mr. -Kean has introduced into the part. Actors in general have been struck -only with the wickedness of the character, and have exhibited an -assassin going to the place of execution. Mr. Kean has abstracted the -wit of the character, and makes _Iago_ appear throughout an excellent -good fellow, and lively bottle-companion. But though we do not wish him -to be represented as a monster, or fiend, we see no reason why he should -instantly be converted into a pattern of comic gaiety and good-humour. -The light which illumines the character should rather resemble the -flashes of lightning in the mirky sky, which make the darkness more -terrible. Mr. Kean’s _Iago_ is, we suspect, too much in the sun. His -manner of acting the part would have suited better with the character of -_Edmund_ in _King Lear_, who, though in other respects much the same, -has a spice of gallantry in his constitution, and has the favour and -countenance of the ladies, which always gives a man the smug appearance -of a bridegroom! - - W. H. - - - NO. 6.] ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY [NOV. 27, 1814. - - TO THE EDITOR OF THE ROUND TABLE. - -SIR,—I do not know that any one has ever explained satisfactorily the -true source of our attachment to natural objects, or of that soothing -emotion which the sight of the country hardly ever fails to infuse into -the mind. Some persons have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty -of the objects themselves, others to the freedom from care, the silence -and tranquillity which scenes of retirement afford—others to the healthy -and innocent employments of a country life—others to the simplicity of -country manners—and others to different causes; but none to the right -one. All these causes may, I believe, have a share in producing this -feeling; but there is another more general principle, which has been -left untouched, and which I shall here explain, endeavouring to be as -little sentimental as the subject will admit. - -Rousseau, in his Confessions, (the most valuable of all his works), -relates, that when he took possession of his room at Annecy, at the -house of his beloved mistress and friend, he found that he could see ‘a -little spot of green’ from his window, which endeared his situation the -more to him, because, he says, it was the first time he had had this -object constantly before him since he left Boissy, the place where he -was at school when a child.[32] Some such feeling as that here described -will be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of this sort. -Were it not for the recollections habitually associated with them, -natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do. No -doubt, the sky is beautiful; the clouds sail majestically along its -bosom; the sun is cheering; there is something exquisitely graceful in -the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches; the motion -with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and -lovely; there is music in the babbling of a brook; the view from the top -of a mountain is full of grandeur; nor can we behold the ocean with -indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly sings— - - ‘Oh how can’st thou renounce the boundless store - Of charms which Nature to her votary yields! - The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, - The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; - All that the genial ray of morning gilds, - And all that echoes to the song of even, - All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields, - And all the dread magnificence of heaven, - Oh how can’st thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!’ - -It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire -in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often found -connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the most -common and familiar images as to the face of a friend whom we have long -known, and from whom we have received many benefits. It is because -natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, -with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind -takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest -to whatever strikes its attention; with change of place, the pursuit of -new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends: it is because they have -surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in -pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief source and -nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them -as we do ourselves. - -There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of Nature -as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas. But -this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment from others is -the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical -objects; the associations connected with any one object extending to the -whole class. My having been attached to any particular person does not -make me feel the same attachment to the next person I may chance to -meet; but, if I have once associated strong feelings of delight with the -objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and I shall -ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same sort. I -remember when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, -rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, -to be as much the same trees and grass, that I had always been used to, -as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in England; -the faces only were foreign to me. Whence comes this difference? It -arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the -individual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural -objects. In the one case, the external appearance or physical structure -is the least thing to be attended to; in the other, it is every thing. -The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to -me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and -ideas contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in -which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, governed -by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make -no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual -sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to -others. But it is otherwise with respect to Nature. There is neither -hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our -intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, interruption -or disappointment. She smiles on us still the same. Thus, to give an -obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and -been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its -feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy -the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can -easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits -them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. -Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind -being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical -uses, we habitually confound them together under the same general idea; -and, whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is immediately -placed to the common account. The most opposite kinds and remote trains -of feeling gradually go to enrich the same sentiment; and in our love of -Nature, there is all the force of individual attachment, combined with -the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that -refinement, expansion, and wild interest to feelings of this sort, when -strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true -lover of Nature. The sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much -from the beauty of the object itself, from the glory kindled through the -glowing skies, the rich broken columns of light, or the dying streaks of -day, as that it indistinctly recalls to me numberless thoughts and -feelings with which, through many a year and season, I have watched his -bright descent in the warm summer evenings, or beheld him struggling to -cast a ‘farewel sweet’ through the thick clouds of winter. I love to see -the trees first covered with leaves in the spring, the primroses peeping -out from some sheltered bank, and the innocent lambs running races on -the soft green turf; because, at that birth-time of Nature, I have -always felt sweet hopes and happy wishes—which have not been fulfilled! -The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream,—the woods swept by the -loud blast,—the dark massy foliage of autumn,—the grey trunks and naked -branches of the trees in winter,—the sequestered copse and wide extended -heath,—the warm sunny showers, and December snows,—have all charms for -me; there is no object, however trifling or rude, that has not, in some -mood or other, found the way to my heart; and I might say, in the words -of the poet, - - ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give - Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’ - -Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents to -us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks. - - ——‘Nature did ne’er betray - The heart that lov’d her, but through all the years - Of this our life, it is her privilege - To lead from joy to joy.’ - -For there is that consent and mutual harmony among all her works, one -undivided spirit pervading them throughout, that, if we have once knit -ourselves in hearty fellowship to any of them, they will never -afterwards appear as strangers to us, but, which ever way we turn, we -shall find a secret power to have gone out before us, moulding them into -such shapes as fancy loves, informing them with life and sympathy, -bidding them put on their festive looks and gayest attire at our -approach, and to pour all their sweets and choicest treasures at our -feet. For him, then, who has well acquainted himself with Nature’s -works, she wears always one face, and speaks the same well-known -language, striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult -of the world, like the music of one’s native tongue heard in some -far-off country. - -We do not connect the same feelings with the works of art as with those -of nature, because we refer them to man, and associate with them the -separate interests and passions which we know belong to those who are -the authors or possessors of them. Nevertheless, there are some such -objects, as a cottage, or a village church, which excite in us the same -sensations as the sight of nature, and which are, indeed, almost always -included in descriptions of natural scenery. - - ‘Or from the mountain’s sides - View wilds and swelling floods, - And hamlets brown, and dim-discover’d spires, - And hear their simple bell.’ - -Which is in part, no doubt, because they are surrounded with natural -objects, and, in a populous country, inseparable from them; and also -because the human interest they excite relates to manners and feelings -which are simple, common, such as all can enter into, and which, -therefore, always produce a pleasing effect upon the mind. - - A. - - - NO. 7.] ON POSTHUMOUS FAME,—WHETHER [MAY 22, 1814. - SHAKSPEARE WAS INFLUENCED BY A LOVE - OF IT? - -It has been much disputed whether Shakspeare was actuated by the love of -fame, though the question has been thought by others not to admit of any -doubt, on the ground that it was impossible for any man of great genius -to be without this feeling. It was supposed, that that immortality, -which was the natural inheritance of men of powerful genius, must be -ever present to their minds, as the reward, the object, and the -animating spring, of all their efforts. This conclusion does not appear -to be well founded, and that for the following reasons: - -First, The love of fame is the offspring of taste, rather than of -genius. The love of fame implies a knowledge of its existence. The men -of the greatest genius, whether poets or philosophers, who lived in the -first ages of society, only just emerging from the gloom of ignorance -and barbarism, could not be supposed to have much idea of those long -trails of lasting glory which they were to leave behind them, and of -which there were as yet no examples. But, after such men, inspired by -the love of truth and nature, have struck out those lights which become -the gaze and admiration of after times,—when those who succeed in -distant generations read with wondering rapture the works which the -bards and sages of antiquity have bequeathed to them,—when they -contemplate the imperishable power of intellect which survives the -stroke of death and the revolutions of empire,—it is then that the -passion for fame becomes an habitual feeling in the mind, and that men -naturally wish to excite the same sentiments of admiration in others -which they themselves have felt, and to transmit their names with the -same honours to posterity. It is from the fond enthusiastic veneration -with which we recal the names of the celebrated men of past times, and -the idolatrous worship we pay to their memories, that we learn what a -delicious thing fame is, and would willingly make any efforts or -sacrifices to be thought of in the same way. It is in the true spirit of -this feeling that a modern writer exclaims— - - ‘Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, - The poets—who on earth have made us heirs - Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays! - Oh! might my name be number’d among theirs, - Then gladly would I end my mortal days!’ - -The love of fame is a species of emulation; or, in other words, the love -of admiration is in proportion to the admiration with which the works of -the highest genius have inspired us, to the delight we have received -from their habitual contemplation, and to our participation in the -general enthusiasm with which they have been regarded by mankind. Thus -there is little of this feeling discoverable in the Greek writers, whose -ideas of posthumous fame seem to have been confined to the glory of -heroic actions; whereas the Roman poets and orators, stimulated by the -reputation which their predecessors had acquired, and having those -exquisite models constantly before their eyes, are full of it. So -Milton, whose capacious mind was imbued with the rich stores of sacred -and of classic lore, to whom learning opened her inmost page, and whose -eye seemed to be ever bent back to the great models of antiquity, was, -it is evident, deeply impressed with a feeling of lofty emulation, and a -strong desire to produce some work of lasting and equal reputation:— - - ——‘Nor sometimes forget - Those other two, equall’d with me in fate, - So were I equall’d with them in renown, - Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, - And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.’[33] - -Spenser, who was a man of learning, had a high opinion of the regard due -to ‘famous poets’ wit’; and Lord Bacon, whose vanity is as well known as -his excessive adulation of that of others, asks, in a tone of proud -exultation, ‘Have not the poems of Homer lasted five-and-twenty hundred -years, and not a syllable of them is lost?’ Chaucer seems to have -derived his notions of fame more immediately from the reputation -acquired by the Italian poets, his contemporaries, which had at that -time spread itself over Europe; while the latter, who were the first to -unlock the springs of ancient learning, and who slaked their thirst of -knowledge at that pure fountain-head, would naturally imbibe the same -feeling from its highest source. Thus, Dante has conveyed the finest -image that can perhaps be conceived of the power of this principle over -the human mind, when he describes the heroes and celebrated men of -antiquity as ‘serene and smiling,’ though in the shades of death, - - ——‘Because on earth their names - In Fame’s eternal volume shine for aye.’ - -But it is not so in Shakspeare. There is scarcely the slightest trace of -any such feeling in his writings, nor any appearance of anxiety for -their fate, or of a desire to perfect them or make them worthy of that -immortality to which they were destined. And this indifference may be -accounted for from the very circumstance, that he was almost entirely a -man of genius, or that in him this faculty bore sway over every other: -he was either not intimately conversant with the productions of the -great writers who had gone before him, or at least was not much indebted -to them: he revelled in the world of observation and of fancy; and -perhaps his mind was of too prolific and active a kind to dwell with -intense and continued interest on the images of beauty or of grandeur -presented to it by the genius of others. He seemed scarcely to have an -individual existence of his own, but to borrow that of others at will, -and to pass successively through ‘every variety of untried being,’—to be -now _Hamlet_, now _Othello_, now _Lear_, now _Falstaff_, now _Ariel_. In -the mingled interests and feelings belonging to this wide range of -imaginary reality, in the tumult and rapid transitions of this waking -dream, the author could not easily find time to think of himself, nor -wish to embody that personal identity in idle reputation after death, of -which he was so little tenacious while living. To feel a strong desire -that others should think highly of us, it is, in general, necessary that -we should think highly of ourselves. There is something of egotism, and -even pedantry, in this sentiment; and there is no author who was so -little tinctured with these as Shakspeare. The passion for fame, like -other passions, requires an exclusive and exaggerated admiration of its -object, and attaches more consequence to literary attainments and -pursuits than they really possess. Shakspeare had looked too much abroad -into the world, and his views of things were of too universal and -comprehensive a cast, not to have taught him to estimate the importance -of posthumous fame according to its true value and relative proportions. -Though he might have some conception of his future fame, he could not -but feel the contrast between that and his actual situation; and, -indeed, he complains bitterly of the latter in one of his sonnets.[34] -He would perhaps think, that, to be the idol of posterity, when we are -no more, was hardly a full compensation for being the object of the -glance and scorn of fools while we are living; and that, in truth, this -universal fame so much vaunted, was a vague phantom of blind enthusiasm; -for what is the amount even of Shakspeare’s fame? That, in that very -country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps not one person in -ten has ever heard of his name, or read a syllable of his writings! - -We will add another observation in connection with this subject, which -is, that men of the greatest genius produce their works with too much -facility (and, as it were, spontaneously) to require the love of fame as -a stimulus to their exertions, or to make them seem deserving of the -admiration of mankind as their reward. It is, indeed, one characteristic -mark of the highest class of excellence to appear to come naturally from -the mind of the author, without consciousness or effort. The work seems -like inspiration—to be the gift of some God or of the Muse. But it is -the sense of difficulty which enhances the admiration of power, both in -ourselves and in others. Hence it is that there is nothing so remote -from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are -endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the -miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is -said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having -seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything -extraordinary. - - Z. - - - NO. 8.] ON HOGARTH’S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE [JUNE 5, 1814. - -The superiority of the pictures of Hogarth, which we have seen in the -late collection at the British Institution, to the common prints, is -confined chiefly to the _Marriage a-la-Mode_. We shall attempt to -illustrate a few of their most striking excellencies, more particularly -with reference to the expression of character. Their merits are indeed -so prominent, and have been so often discussed, that it may be thought -difficult to point out any new beauties; but they contain so much truth -of nature, they present the objects to the eye under so many aspects and -bearings, admit of so many constructions, and are so pregnant with -meaning, that the subject is in a manner inexhaustible. - -Boccacio, the most refined and sentimental of all the novel-writers, has -been stigmatised as a mere inventor of licentious tales, because readers -in general have only seized on those things in his works which were -suited to their own taste, and have reflected their own grossness back -upon the writer. So it has happened that the majority of critics having -been most struck with the strong and decided expression in Hogarth, the -extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of character in his pictures have -almost entirely escaped them. In the first picture of the _Marriage -a-la-Mode_, the three figures of the young Nobleman, his intended Bride, -and her inamorato, the Lawyer, shew how much Hogarth excelled in the -power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They have, however, been -less noticed than the other figures, which tell a plainer story and -convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can be more finely managed than -the differences of character in these delicate personages. The Beau sits -smiling at the looking-glass, with a reflected simper of -self-admiration, and a languishing inclination of the head, while the -rest of his body is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of -tiptoe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II., whose -powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches, divide his self-love -unequally with his own person,—the true Sir Plume of his day; - - ‘Of amber-lidded snuff-box justly vain, - And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.’ - -There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the Bride, -courted by the Lawyer. There is the utmost flexibility, and yielding -softness in her whole person, a listless languor and tremulous suspense -in the expression of her face. It is the precise look and air which Pope -has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the moment of the _Rape of -the Lock_. The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened -soul of love in the same face, in the assignation scene before the -masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy, -timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The Lawyer in both -pictures is much the same—perhaps too much so—though even this unmoved, -unaltered appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases he -has ‘a person, and a smooth dispose, framed to make woman false.’ He is -full of that easy good-humour and easy good opinion of himself, with -which the sex are delighted. There is not a sharp angle in his face to -obstruct his success, or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole -aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least -expense of thought, careless and inviting; and conveys a perfect idea of -the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of the soft periods that -flow from his tongue. - -The expression of the Bride in the Morning Scene is the most highly -seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar in the series. The -figure, face, and attitude of the Husband are inimitable. Hogarth has -with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the -yellow whitish colour of the marble chimney-piece behind him, in such a -manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour -of the view of the inner room in this picture is probably not exceeded -by any of the productions of the Flemish School. - -The Young Girl in the third picture, who is represented as the victim of -fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one of the artist’s -_chef-d’œuvres_. The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only -surpassed by the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be -more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her -person, and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant -stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful -sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to -have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain,—shew the deepest -insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in -depravity by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses -half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ The story of this picture is -in some parts very obscure and enigmatical. It is certain that the -Nobleman is not looking straightforward to the Quack, whom he seems to -have been threatening with his cane, but that his eyes are turned up -with an ironical leer of triumph to the Procuress. The commanding -attitude and size of this woman, the swelling circumference of her -dress, spread out like a turkey-cock’s feathers,—the fierce, -ungovernable, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which hardly -needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose, are all -admirable in themselves, and still more so, as they are opposed to the -mute insensibility, the elegant negligence of the dress, and the -childish figure of the girl, who is supposed to be her _protégée_. As -for the Quack, there can be no doubt entertained about him. His face -seems as if it were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the -chaos and confusion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent -empiricism. - -The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the Music Scene are finely -imagined and preserved. The preposterous, overstrained admiration of the -Lady of Quality, the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the Man -with his hair in papers and sipping his tea,—the pert, smirking, -conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to him, the -transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and -then to the wonder of the Negro-boy at the rapture of his Mistress, form -a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of the -female Virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. This is lost -in the print. The continuing the red colour of the hair into the back of -the chair has been pointed out as one of those instances of alliteration -in colouring, of which these pictures are everywhere full. The gross -bloated appearance of the Italian Singer is well relieved by the hard -features of the instrumental performer behind him, which might be carved -of wood. The Negro-boy, holding the chocolate, both in expression, -colour, and execution, is a master-piece. The gay, lively derision of -the other Negro boy, playing with the Actæon, is an ingenious contrast -to the profound amazement of the first. Some account has already been -given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to observe the -infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. -An instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived the -papers in the hair of the Bride, as to make them look almost like a -wreath of half-blown flowers, while those which he has placed on the -head of the musical Amateur very much resemble a _cheveux-de-frise_ of -horns, which adorn and fortify the lack-lustre expression and mild -resignation of the face beneath. - -The Night Scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of -the Husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible -for him to stand or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard -figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in -which the Wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to -the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face -and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to -the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the Servant, -whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is -as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard -eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken, gapped -teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer—every thing about him -denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of -colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, -and are well worthy the attention of the artist. - - - NO. 9.] THE SUBJECT CONTINUED [JUNE 19, 1814. - -It has been observed, that Hogarth’s pictures are exceedingly unlike any -other representations of the same kind of subjects—that they form a -class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth -while to consider in what this general distinction consists. - -In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, _Historical_ -pictures; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of _Tom -Jones_ ought to be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained -a regular developement of fable, manners, character, and passion, the -compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner, be found to have a higher -claim to the title of Epic Pictures than many which have of late -arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth -treated his subjects historically, we mean that his works represent the -manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters by varied -expression. Every thing in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not -only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature -and muscle is put into full play; the exact feeling of the moment is -brought out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized -and stamped on the canvass for ever. The expression is always taken _en -passant_, in a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the -salient point. Besides the excellence of each individual face, the -reflection of the expression from face to face, the contrast and -struggle of particular motives and feelings in the different actors in -the scene, as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion, are conveyed in -the happiest and most lively manner. His figures are not like the -back-ground on which they are painted: even the pictures on the wall -have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, -and scope of history, Hogarth’s heads have all the reality and -correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and -expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, -in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same -kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still -life. It of course happens in subjects from common life, that the -painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as -he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions have been -chosen which could be assumed the longest; and in imitating which, the -artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete -fac-similes as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask -curtain, or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting -in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery -and ridicule affording frequent examples of strange deformity and -peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class -of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the laborious drudgery -of the Dutch School and their imitators, have produced our popular -caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities -of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of both -these styles, the insipid tameness of the one, and the gross vulgarity -of the other, so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal -solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, -and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it: they -take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see the links which -bind them to nature: they bear all the marks and carry all the -conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the actual faces for -the first time, from the precision, consistency, and good sense, with -which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most -uncommon features with the most uncommon expressions, but which are yet -as familiar and intelligible as possible, because with all the boldness -they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many -of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as perhaps most of -us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the -quantity of our observation. - -We have, in a former paper, attempted to point out the fund of -observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of these pictures, -the _Marriage a-la-Mode_. The rest would furnish as many topics to -descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the -painter’s invention. But as this is not the case, we shall content -ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other -pictures, which appear the most striking, and which we see not only -while we are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other -times. For instance, who having seen can easily forget that exquisite -frost-piece of religion and morality, the antiquated Prude in the -Morning Scene; or that striking commentary on the _good old times_, the -little wretched appendage of a Foot-boy, who crawls half famished and -half frozen behind her? The French Man and Woman in the Noon are the -perfection of flighty affectation and studied grimace; the amiable -_fraternisation_ of the two old Women saluting each other is not enough -to be admired; and in the little Master, in the same national group, we -see the early promise and personification of that eternal principle of -wondrous self-complacency, proof against all circumstances, and which -makes the French the only people who are vain even of being cuckolded -and being conquered! Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress -and unmitigated terrors of the Boy, who has dropped his dish of meat, -and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with -the noise he makes? Or what can be better than the good housewifery of -the Girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments, or than the -plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the Servant-wench, embraced by a -greasy rascal of an Othello, with her pye-dish tottering like her -virtue, and with the most precious part of its contents running over? -Just—no, not quite—as good is the joke of the Woman over-head, who, -having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday’s dinner -out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of -baked-dishes. The Husband in the Evening Scene is certainly as meek as -any recorded in history; but we cannot say that we admire this picture, -or the Night Scene after it. But then, in the Taste in High Life, there -is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and -delighting one another by ‘all the mutually reflected charities’ of -folly and affectation, with the young Lady coloured like a rose, -dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed, chuckling -favourite, and with the portrait of Mons. Des Noyers in the back-ground, -dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in the -Election Dinner, is the immortal Cobler, surrounded by his Peers, who, -‘frequent and full,’— - - ‘In _loud_ recess and _brawling_ conclave sit’:— - -the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain—innumerable fine -sketches of heads in the Polling for Votes, of which the Nobleman -overlooking the caricaturist is the best; and then the irresistible -tumultuous display of broad humour in the Chairing the Member, which is, -perhaps, of all Hogarth’s pictures, the most full of laughable incidents -and situations—the yellow, rusty-faced thresher, with his swinging -flail, breaking the head of one of the Chairmen, and his redoubted -antagonist, the Sailor, with his oak-stick, and stumping wooden leg, a -supplemental cudgel—the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling Blind -Fiddler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the -artificial excrescence of the honest Tar—Monsieur, the Monkey, with -piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant -candidate, and his brother Bruin, appropriating the paunch—the -precipitous flight of the Pigs, souse over head into the water, the fine -Lady fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two Chimney-sweepers, -satirical young rogues! We had almost forgot the Politician who is -burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading the newspaper; -and the Chickens, in the _March to Finchley_, wandering in search of -their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the Serjeant. Of the -pictures in the _Rake’s Progress_ in this collection, we shall not here -say any thing, because we think them, on the whole, inferior to the -prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to -whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every -lover of Hogarth and of English genius.[35] - - W. H. - - - NO. 10.] ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS [AUG. 6, 1815. - - ‘At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue: - To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.’ - -Of all Milton’s smaller poems, _Lycidas_ is the greatest favourite with -us. We cannot agree to the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against -it, of pedantry and want of feeling. It is the fine emanation of -classical sentiment in a youthful scholar—‘most musical, most -melancholy.’ A certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward -abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections -that arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the sounds -of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose death he -laments seems to have recalled, with double force, the reality of those -speculations which they had indulged together; we are transported to -classic ground, and a mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear -while we listen to the poet, - - ‘With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.’ - -We shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support of our -opinion. The first we shall quote is as remarkable for the truth and -sweetness of the natural descriptions as for the characteristic elegance -of the allusions: - - ‘Together both, ere the high lawns appear’d - Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, - We drove a-field; and both together heard - What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, - Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, - Oft till the star that rose at evening bright - Towards Heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel. - Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, - Temper’d to the oaten flute: - Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel - From the glad sound would not be absent long, - And old Dametas loved to hear our song. - But oh the heavy change, now thou art gone, - Now thou art gone, and never must return! - Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves - With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown, - And all their echoes mourn. - The willows and the hazel copses green - Shall now no more be seen - Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. - As killing as the canker to the rose, - Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, - Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear, - When first the white-thorn blows; - Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear!’ - -After the fine apostrophe on Fame which Phœbus is invoked to utter, the -poet proceeds: - - ‘Oh fountain Arethuse, and thou honour’d flood, - Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown’d with vocal reeds, - That strain I heard was of a higher mood; - But now my oat proceeds, - And listens to the herald of the sea - That came in Neptune’s plea. - He ask’d the waves, and ask’d the felon winds, - What hard mishap hath doom’d this gentle swain? - And question’d every gust of rugged winds - That blows from off each beaked promontory. - They knew not of his story: - And sage Hippotades their answer brings, - That not a blast was from his dungeon stray’d, - The air was calm, and on the level brine - Sleek Panope with all her sisters play’d.’ - -If this is art, it is perfect art; nor do we wish for anything better. -The measure of the verse, the very sound of the names, would almost -produce the effect here described. To ask the poet not to make use of -such allusions as these, is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours -of the rainbow, if he could. In fact, it is the common cant of criticism -to consider every allusion to the classics, and particularly in a mind -like Milton’s, as pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second nature; -and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be called so) of the -scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to images of which -his mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation -in him to recur to ideas and modes of expression, with which he has the -strongest associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight. -Milton was as conversant with the world of genius before him as with the -world of nature about him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as -familiar to him as his dreams. To be a pedant, is to see neither the -beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw both; and he made use of the -one only to adorn and give new interest to the other. He was a -passionate admirer of nature; and, in a single couplet of his, -describing the moon,— - - ‘Like one that had been led astray - Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,’— - -there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of nature (as if -he had gazed himself blind in looking at her), than in twenty volumes of -descriptive poetry. But he added to his own observation of nature the -splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of -ancient religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names. - - ‘Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, - His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, - Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge - Like to that sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe. - Oh! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? - Last came, and last did go, - The pilot of the Galilean lake.’ - -There is a wonderful correspondence in the rhythm of these lines to the -idea which they convey. This passage, which alludes to the clerical -character of _Lycidas_, has been found fault with, as combining the -truths of the Christian religion with the fictions of the heathen -mythology. We conceive there is very little foundation for this -objection, either in reason or good taste. We will not go so far as to -defend Camoens, who, in his _Lusiad_, makes Jupiter send Mercury with a -dream to propagate the Catholic religion; nor do we know that it is -generally proper to introduce the two things in the same poem, though we -see no objection to it here; but of this we are quite sure, that there -is no inconsistency or natural repugnance between this poetical and -religious faith in the same mind. To the understanding, the belief of -the one is incompatible with that of the other; but in the imagination, -they not only may, but do constantly co-exist. We will venture to go -farther, and maintain, that every classical scholar, however orthodox a -Christian he may be, is an honest Heathen at heart. This requires -explanation. Whoever, then, attaches a reality to any idea beyond the -mere name, has, to a certain extent, (though not an abstract), an -habitual and practical belief in it. Now, to any one familiar with the -names of the personages of the Heathen mythology, they convey a positive -identity beyond the mere name. We refer them to something out of -ourselves. It is only by an effort of abstraction that we divest -ourselves of the idea of their reality; all our involuntary prejudices -are on their side. This is enough for the poet. They impose on the -imagination by all the attractions of beauty and grandeur. They come -down to us in sculpture and in song. We have the same associations with -them, as if they had really been; for the belief of the fiction in -ancient times has produced all the same effects as the reality could -have done. It was a reality to the minds of the ancient Greeks and -Romans, and through them it is reflected to us. And, as we shape towers, -and men, and armed steeds, out of the broken clouds that glitter in the -distant horizon, so, throned above the ruins of the ancient world, -Jupiter still nods sublime on the top of blue Olympus, Hercules leans -upon his club, Apollo has not laid aside his bow, nor Neptune his -trident; the sea-gods ride upon the sounding waves, the long procession -of heroes and demi-gods passes in endless review before us, and still we -hear - - ——‘The Muses in a ring - Aye round about Jove’s altar sing: - - . . . . . - - Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, - And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’ - -If all these mighty fictions had really existed, they could have done no -more for us! We shall only give one other passage from _Lycidas_; but we -flatter ourselves that it will be a treat to our readers, if they are -not already familiar with it. It is the passage which contains that -exquisite description of the flowers: - - ‘Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past - That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, - And call the vales, and bid them hither cast - Their bells, and flow’rets of a thousand hues. - Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use - Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks, - On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, - Throw hither all your quaint enamell’d eyes, - That on the green turf suck the honied showers, - And purple all the ground with vernal flowers; - Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, - The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, - The white pink, and the pansy freak’d with jet, - The glowing violet, - The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, - With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, - And every flower that sad embroidery wears; - Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, - And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, - To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies. - For so to interpose a little ease - Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. - Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas - Waft far away, where’er thy bones are hurl’d, - Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, - Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide - Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world, - Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, - Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old, - Where the great vision of the guarded mount - Looks towards Namancos and Bayona’s hold, - Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth, - And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.’ - -Dr. Johnson is very much offended at the introduction of these Dolphins; -and indeed, if he had had to guide them through the waves, he would have -made much the same figure as his old friend Dr. Burney does, swimming in -the _Thames_ with his wig on, with the water-nymphs, in the picture by -Barry at the Adelphi. - -There is a description of flowers in the _Winter’s Tale_, which we shall -give as a parallel to Milton’s. We shall leave it to the reader to -decide which is the finest; for we dare not give the preference. -_Perdita_ says, - - ——‘Here’s flowers for you, - Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram, - The marygold, that goes to bed with the sun, - And with him rises weeping; these are flowers - Of middle summer, and I think, they’re given - To men of middle age. Y’are welcome. - - ‘_Camillo._ I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, - And only live by gazing. - - ‘_Perdita._ Out, alas! - You’d be so lean, that blasts of January - Would blow you through and through. Now, my fairest friend, - I would I had some flowers o’ th’ spring, that might - Become your time of day: O Proserpina, - For the flowers now, that, frighted, you let fall - From Dis’s waggon! Daffodils, - That come before the swallow dares, and take - The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, - But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, - Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, - That die unmarried, ere they can behold - Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady - Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and - The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, - The flower de lis being one. O, these I lack - To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, - To strew him o’er and o’er.’ - -Dr. Johnson’s general remark, that Milton’s genius had not room to show -itself in his smaller pieces, is not well-founded. Not to mention -_Lycidas_, the _Allegro_, and _Penseroso_, it proceeds on a false -estimate of the merits of his great work, which is not more -distinguished by strength and sublimity than by tenderness and beauty. -The last were as essential qualities of Milton’s mind as the first. The -battle of the angels, which has been commonly considered as the best -part of the _Paradise Lost_, is the worst. - - W. H. - - - NO. 11.] ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION [AUG. 20, 1815. - -Milton’s works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. -His religious zeal infused its character into his imagination; and he -devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his -genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the good of his country. -He does not write from casual impulse, but after a severe examination of -his own strength, and with a determination to leave nothing undone which -it is in his power to do. He always labours, and he almost always -succeeds. He strives to say the finest things in the world, and he does -say them. He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost. He -surrounds it with all the possible associations of beauty or grandeur, -whether moral, or physical, or intellectual. He refines on his -descriptions of beauty, till the sense almost aches at them, and raises -his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that ‘makes Ossa like a -wart.’ He has a high standard, with which he is constantly comparing -himself, and nothing short of which can satisfy him: - - ——‘Sad task, yet argument - Not less but more heroic than the wrath - Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued, - If answerable stile I can obtain. - ——Unless an age too late, or cold - Climate, or years, damp my intended wing.’ - -Milton has borrowed more than any other writer; yet he is perfectly -distinct from every other writer. The power of his mind is stamped on -every line. He is a writer of centos, and yet in originality only -inferior to Homer. The quantity of art shews the strength of his genius; -so much art would have overloaded any other writer. Milton’s learning -has all the effect of intuition. He describes objects of which he had -only read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His -imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures: - - ‘Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat - Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks - Of Abbana and Pharphar, _lucid_ streams.’ - -And again: - - ‘As when a vulture on Imaus bred, - Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, - Dislodging from a region scarce of prey - To gorge the flesh of lambs or yearling kids - On hills where flocks are fed, _flies towards the springs - Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; - But in his way lights on the barren plains - Of Sericana, where Chineses drive - With sails and wind their cany waggons light_.’ - -Such passages may be considered as demonstrations of history. Instances -might be multiplied without end. There is also a decided tone in his -descriptions, an eloquent dogmatism, as if the poet spoke from thorough -conviction, which Milton probably derived from his spirit of -partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the natural -firmness and vehemence of his mind. In this Milton resembles Dante, (the -only one of the moderns with whom he has anything in common), and it is -remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That -approximation to the severity of impassioned prose which has been made -an objection to Milton’s poetry, is one of its chief excellencies. It -has been suggested, that the vividness with which he describes visible -objects, might be owing to their having acquired a greater strength in -his mind after the privation of sight; but we find the same palpableness -and solidity in the descriptions which occur in his early poems. There -is, indeed, the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the -objects of the other senses. Milton had as much of what is meant by -_gusto_ as any poet. He forms the most intense conceptions of things, -and then embodies them by a single stroke of his pen. Force of style is -perhaps his first excellence. Hence he stimulates us most in the -reading, and less afterwards. - -It has been said that Milton’s ideas were musical rather than -picturesque, but this observation is not true, in the sense in which it -was meant. The ear, indeed, predominates over the eye, because it is -more immediately affected, and because the language of music blends more -immediately with, and forms a more natural accompaniment to, the -variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by words. But -where the associations of the imagination are not the principal thing, -the individual object is given by Milton with equal force and beauty. -The strongest and best proof of this, as a characteristic power of his -mind, is, that the persons of Adam and Eve, of Satan, etc., are always -accompanied, in our imagination, with the grandeur of the naked figure; -they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an instance, take the -following: - - ——‘He soon - Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, - The same whom John saw also in the sun: - His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; - Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar - Circled his head, nor less his locks behind - Illustrious on his shoulders fledged with wings - Lay waving round; on some great charge employ’d - He seem’d, or fix’d in cogitation deep. - Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope - To find who might direct his wand’ring flight - To Paradise, the happy seat of man, - His journey’s end, and our beginning woe. - But first he casts to change his proper shape, - Which else might work him danger or delay: - And now a stripling cherub he appears, - Not of the prime, yet such as in his face - Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb - Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d: - Under a coronet his flowing hair - In curls on either cheek play’d; wings he wore - Of many a colour’d plume sprinkled with gold, - His habit fit for speed succinct, and held - Before his decent steps a silver wand.’ - -The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a -Greek statue. - -Milton’s blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except -Shakspeare’s) which is readable. Dr. Johnson, who had modelled his ideas -of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the -_Paradise Lost_ as harsh and unequal. We shall not pretend to say that -this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree of excellence beyond -the mechanical rules of art is attempted the poet must sometimes fail. -But we imagine that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical -expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the verse -to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other writers, whether of -rhyme or blank verse, put together, (with the exception already -mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our poets, and Dryden is -the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there -anything like the same ear for music, the same power of approximating -the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our -great epic poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression -of the sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or -hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick or -affectation, as the occasion seems to require. - -The following are some of the finest instances: - - ——‘His hand was known - In Heaven by many a tower’d structure high; - Nor was his name unheard or unador’d - In ancient Greece: and in the Ausonian land - Men called him Mulciber: and how he fell - From Heav’n, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove - Sheer o’er the crystal battlements; from morn - To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, - A summer’s day; and with the setting sun - Dropt from the zenith like a falling star - On Lemnos, the Ægean isle: this they relate, - Erring.’ - - ——‘But chief the spacious hall - Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air, - Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees - In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, - Pour forth their populous youth about the hive - In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow’rs - Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, - The suburb of their straw-built citadel, - New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer - Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd - Swarm’d and were straiten’d; till the signal giv’n, - Behold a wonder! They but now who seem’d - In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons, - Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room - Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race - Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, - Whose midnight revels by a forest side - Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, - Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon - Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth - Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance - Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; - At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’ - -We can only give another instance; though we have some difficulty in -leaving off. ‘What a pity,’ said an ingenious person of our -acquaintance, ‘that Milton had not the pleasure of reading _Paradise -Lost_!’— - - ‘Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood - So high above the circling canopy - Of night’s extended shade) from eastern point - Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears - Andromeda far off Atlantic seas - Beyond th’ horizon: then from pole to pole - He views in breadth, and without longer pause - Down right into the world’s first region throws - His flight precipitant, and winds with ease - Through the pure marble air his oblique way - Amongst innumerable stars that shone - Stars distant, but nigh hand seem’d other worlds; - Or other worlds they seem’d or happy isles,’ etc. - -The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down as -if it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his -versification. - - ‘In many a winding bout - Of linked sweetness long drawn out.’ - -Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a -rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton’s,—Thomson’s, -Young’s, Cowper’s, Wordsworth’s,—and it will be found, from the want of -the same insight into ‘the hidden soul of harmony,’ to be mere lumbering -prose. - - W. H. - - _To the President of The Round Table._ - - SIR,—It is somewhat remarkable, that in _Pope’s Essay on Criticism_ - (not a very long poem) there are no less than half a score couplets - rhyming to the word _sense_. - - ‘But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, - To tire our patience than mislead our sense.’—_lines_ 3, 4. - - ‘In search of wit these lose their common sense, - And then turn critics in their own defence.’—_l._ 28, 29. - - ‘Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, - And fills up all the mighty void of sense.’—_l._ 209, 10. - - ‘Some by old words to fame have made pretence, - Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.’—_l._ 324, 5. - - ‘’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; - The sound must seem an echo to the sense.’—_l._ 364, 5. - - ‘At every trifle scorn to take offence; - That always shews great pride or little sense.’—_l._ 386, 7. - - ‘Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, - And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.’—_l._ 566, 7. - - ‘Be niggards of advice on no pretence, - For the worst avarice is that of sense.’—_l._ 578, 9. - - ‘Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense, - And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.’—_l._ 608, 9. - - ‘Horace still charms with graceful negligence, - And without method talks us into sense.’—_l._ 653, 4. - - I am, Sir, your humble servant, - - A SMALL CRITIC. - - - NO. 12.] ON MANNER [AUG. 27, 1815. - [SEP. 3, 1815. - -It was the opinion of Lord Chesterfield, that _manner_ is of more -importance than _matter_. This opinion seems at least to be warranted by -the practice of the world; nor do we think it so entirely without -foundation as some persons of more solid than showy pretensions would -make us believe. In the remarks which we are going to make, we can -scarcely hope to have any party very warmly on our side; for the most -superficial coxcomb would be thought to owe his success to sterling -merit. - -What any person says or does is one thing; the mode in which he says or -does it is another. The last of these is what we understand by _manner_. -In other words, manner is the involuntary or incidental expression given -to our thoughts and sentiments by looks, tones, and gestures. Now, we -are inclined in many cases to prefer this latter mode of judging of what -passes in the mind to more positive and formal proof, were it for no -other reason than that it is involuntary. ‘Look,’ says Lord -Chesterfield, ‘in the face of the person to whom you are speaking, if -you wish to know his real sentiments; for he can command his words more -easily than his countenance.’ We may perform certain actions from -design, or repeat certain professions by rote: the manner of doing -either will in general be the best test of our sincerity. The mode of -conferring a favour is often thought of more value than the favour -itself. The actual obligation may spring from a variety of questionable -motives, vanity, affectation, or interest: the cordiality with which the -person from whom you have received it asks you how you do, or shakes you -by the hand, does not admit of misinterpretation. The manner of doing -any thing, is that which marks the degree and force of our internal -impressions; it emanates most directly from our immediate or habitual -feelings; it is that which stamps its life and character on any action; -the rest may be performed by an automaton. What is it that makes the -difference between the best and the worst actor, but the manner of going -through the same part? The one has a perfect idea of the degree and -force with which certain feelings operate in nature, and the other has -no idea at all of the workings of passion. There would be no difference -between the worst actor in the world and the best, placed in real -circumstances, and under the influence of real passion. A writer may -express the thoughts he has borrowed from another, but not with the same -force, unless he enters into the true spirit of them. Otherwise he will -resemble a person reading what he does not understand, whom you -immediately detect by his wrong emphasis. His illustrations will be -literally exact, but misplaced and awkward; he will not gradually warm -with his subject, nor feel the force of what he says, nor produce the -same effect on his readers. An author’s style is not less a criterion of -his understanding than his sentiments. The same story told by two -different persons shall, from the difference of the manner, either set -the table in a roar, or not relax a feature in the whole company. We -sometimes complain (perhaps rather unfairly) that particular persons -possess more vivacity than wit. But we ought to take into the account, -that their very vivacity arises from their enjoying the joke; and their -humouring a story by drollery of gesture or archness of look, shews only -that they are acquainted with the different ways in which the sense of -the ludicrous expresses itself. It is not the mere dry jest, but the -relish which the person himself has of it, with which we sympathise. For -in all that tends to pleasure and excitement, the capacity for enjoyment -is the principal point. One of the most pleasant and least tiresome -persons of our acquaintance is a humourist, who has three or four quaint -witticisms and proverbial phrases, which he always repeats over and -over; but he does this with just the same vivacity and freshness as -ever, so that you feel the same amusement with less effort than if he -had startled his hearers with a succession of original conceits. Another -friend of ours, who never fails to give vent to one or two real -_jeu-d’esprits_ every time you meet him, from the pain with which he is -delivered of them, and the uneasiness he seems to suffer all the rest of -the time, makes a much more interesting than comfortable companion. If -you see a person in pain for himself, it naturally puts you in pain for -him. The art of pleasing consists in being pleased. To be amiable is to -be satisfied with one’s self and others. Good-humour is essential to -pleasantry. It is this circumstance, among others, that renders the wit -of Rabelais so much more delightful than that of Swift, who, with all -his satire, is ‘as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.’ In -society, good-temper and animal spirits are nearly everything. They are -of more importance than sallies of wit, or refinements of understanding. -They give a general tone of cheerfulness and satisfaction to the -company. The French have the advantage over us in external manners. They -breathe a lighter air, and have a brisker circulation of the blood. They -receive and communicate their impressions more freely. The interchange -of ideas costs them less. Their constitutional gaiety is a kind of -natural intoxication, which does not require any other stimulus. The -English are not so well off in this respect; and _Falstaff’s_ -commendation on sack was evidently intended for his countrymen,—whose -‘learning is often a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till wine -commences it, and sets it in act and use.’[36] More undertakings fail -for want of spirit than for want of sense. Confidence gives a fool the -advantage over a wise man. In general, a strong passion for any object -will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means. -We apprehend that people usually complain, without reason, of not -succeeding in various pursuits according to their deserts. Such persons, -we will grant, may have great merit in all other respects; but in that -in which they fail, it will almost invariably hold true, that they do -not deserve to succeed. For instance, a person who has spent his life in -thinking will acquire a habit of reflection; but he will neither become -a dancer nor a singer, rich nor beautiful. In like manner, if any one -complains of not succeeding in affairs of gallantry, we will venture to -say, it is because he is not gallant. He has mistaken his talent—that’s -all. If any person of exquisite sensibility makes love awkwardly, it is -because he does not feel it as he should. One of these disappointed -sentimentalists may very probably feel it upon reflection, may brood -over it till he has worked himself up to a pitch of frenzy, and write -his mistress the finest love-letters in the world, in her absence; but, -be assured, he does not feel an atom of this passion in her presence. -If, in paying her a compliment, he frowns with more than usual severity, -or, in presenting her with a bunch of flowers, seems as if he was going -to turn his back upon her, he can only expect to be laughed at for his -pains; nor can he plead an excess of feeling as an excuse for want of -common sense. She may say, ‘It is not with me you are in love, but with -the ridiculous chimeras of your own brain. You are thinking of _Sophia -Western_, or some other heroine, and not of me. Go and make love to your -romances.’ - -Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good -illustration of his general theory. He says, ‘Of all the men I ever knew -in my life, (and I knew him extremely well), the late Duke of -Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say -engrossed them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound -historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe -the better half of the Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to -those graces. He was eminently illiterate; wrote bad English, and spelt -it worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, no -brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an -excellent good plain understanding with sound judgment. But these alone -would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, -which was page to King James II.‘s Queen. There the Graces protected and -promoted him; for while he was Ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of -Cleveland, then favourite mistress of Charles II., struck by these very -graces, gave him £5000, with which he immediately bought an annuity of -£500 a year, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His -figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by either man or -woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled, -during all his wars, to connect the various and jarring powers of the -grand alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, -notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and -wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to -go himself to some resty and refractory ones), he as constantly -prevailed, and brought them into his measures.’[37] - -Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain -fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which -reposes on its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all around it, -that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of -languid enjoyment in such persons, ‘in their eyes, in their arms, and -their hands, and their faces,’ which robs us of ourselves, and draws us -by a secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine where -pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation like the breath of -spring. Petrarch’s description of Laura answers exactly to this -character, which is indeed the Italian character. Titian’s portraits are -full of it: they seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons whom -he painted sat to music. There is one in the Louvre (or there was) which -had the most of this expression we ever remember. It did not look -downward; ‘it looked forward, beyond this world.’ It was a look that -never passed away, but remained unalterable as the deep sentiment which -gave birth to it. It is the same constitutional character (together with -infinite activity of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern -history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to -submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as little -discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess. - -Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony -of the soul. Foreigners have more of this than the English,—particularly -the people of the southern and eastern countries. Their motions appear -(like the expression of their countenances) to have a more immediate -communication with their feelings. The inhabitants of the northern -climates, compared with these children of the sun, are like hard -inanimate machines, with difficulty set in motion. A strolling gipsy -will offer to tell your fortune with a grace and an insinuation of -address that would be admired in a court.[38] The Hindoos that we see -about the streets are another example of this. They are a different race -of people from ourselves. They wander about in a luxurious dream. They -are like part of a glittering procession,—like revellers in some gay -carnival. Their life is a dance, a measure; they hardly seem to tread -the earth, but are borne along in some more genial element, and bask in -the radiance of brighter suns. We may understand this difference of -climate by recollecting the difference of our own sensations at -different times, in the fine glow of summer, or when we are pinched and -dried up by a northeast wind. Even the foolish Chinese, who go about -twirling their fans and their windmills, shew the same delight in them -as the children they collect around them. The people of the East make it -their business to sit and think and do nothing. They indulge in endless -reverie; for the incapacity of enjoyment does not impose on them the -necessity of action. There is a striking example of this passion for -castle-building in the story of the glass-man in the Arabian Nights. - -After all, we would not be understood to say that manner is every thing. -Nor would we put Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton on a level with the first -_petit-maître_ we might happen to meet. We consider _Æsop’s Fables_ to -have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine’s translation of them; -though we doubt whether we should not prefer Fontaine, for his style -only, to Gay, who has shewn a great deal of original invention. The -elegant manners of people of fashion have been objected to us to shew -the frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility with which -they are acquired. As to the last point, we demur. There is no class of -people who lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate -their minds as well as persons, than people of fashion. A young lady of -quality, who has to devote so many hours a day to music, so many to -dancing, so many to drawing, so many to French, Italian, etc., certainly -does not pass her time in idleness; and these accomplishments are -afterwards called into action by every kind of external or mental -stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity, and interest. A -Ministerial or Opposition lord goes through more drudgery than half a -dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read half the -same number of productions as a modern fine lady is obliged to labour -through. We confess, however, we are not competent judges of the degree -of elegance or refinement implied in the general tone of fashionable -manners. The successful experiment made by _Peregrine Pickle_, in -introducing his strolling mistress into genteel company, does not -redound greatly to their credit. In point of elegance of external -appearance, we see no difference between women of fashion and women of a -different character, who dress in the same style. - - T. T. - - - NO. 13.] ON THE TENDENCY OF SECTS [SEP. 10, 1815. - -There is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the mind. - -The extreme stress laid upon differences of minor importance, to the -neglect of more general truths and broader views of things, gives an -inverted bias to the understanding; and this bias is continually -increased by the eagerness of controversy, and captious hostility to the -prevailing system. A party-feeling of this kind once formed will -insensibly communicate itself to other topics; and will be too apt to -lead its votaries to a contempt for the opinions of others, a jealousy -of every difference of sentiment, and a disposition to arrogate all -sound principle as well as understanding to themselves, and those who -think with them. We can readily conceive how such persons, from fixing -too high a value on the practical pledge which they have given of the -independence and sincerity of their opinions, come at last to entertain -a suspicion of every one else as acting under the shackles of prejudice -or the mask of hypocrisy. All those who have not given in their -unqualified protest against received doctrines and established -authority, are supposed to labour under an acknowledged incapacity to -form a rational determination on any subject whatever. Any argument, not -having the presumption of singularity in its favour, is immediately set -aside as nugatory. There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that -which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice. For this last -implies not only the practical conviction that it is right, but the -theoretical assumption that it cannot be wrong. From considering all -objections as in this manner ‘null and void,’ the mind becomes so -thoroughly satisfied with its own conclusions, as to render any further -examination of them superfluous, and confounds its exclusive pretensions -to reason with the absolute possession of it. Those who, from their -professing to submit everything to the test of reason, have acquired the -name of rational Dissenters, have their weak sides as well as other -people: nor do we know of any class of disputants more disposed to take -their opinions for granted, than those who call themselves Freethinkers. -A long habit of objecting to every thing establishes a monopoly in the -right of contradiction; a prescriptive title to the privilege of -starting doubts and difficulties in the common belief, without being -liable to have our own called in question. There cannot be a more -infallible way to prove that we must be in the right, than by -maintaining roundly that every one else is in the wrong! Not only the -opposition of sects to one another, but their unanimity among -themselves, strengthens their confidence in their peculiar notions. They -feel themselves invulnerable behind the double fence of sympathy with -themselves, and antipathy to the rest of the world. Backed by the -zealous support of their followers, they become equally intolerant with -respect to the opinions of others, and tenacious of their own. They -fortify themselves within the narrow circle of their new-fangled -prejudices; the whole exercise of their right of private judgment is -after a time reduced to the repetition of a set of watchwords, which -have been adopted as the Shiboleth of the party; and their extremest -points of faith pass as current as the beadroll and legends of the -Catholics, or St. Athanasius’s Creed, and the Thirty-nine Articles. We -certainly are not going to recommend the establishment of articles of -faith, or implicit assent to them, as favourable to the progress of -philosophy; but neither has the spirit of opposition to them this -tendency, as far as relates to its immediate effects, however useful it -may be in its remote consequences. The spirit of controversy substitutes -the irritation of personal feeling for the independent exertion of the -understanding; and when this irritation ceases, the mind flags for want -of a sufficient stimulus to urge it on. It discharges all its energy -with its spleen. Besides, this perpetual cavilling with the opinions of -others, detecting petty flaws in their arguments, calling them to a -literal account for their absurdities, and squaring their doctrines by a -pragmatical standard of our own, is necessarily adverse to any great -enlargement of mind, or original freedom of thought.[39] The constant -attention bestowed on a few contested points, by at once flattering our -pride, our prejudices, and our indolence, supersedes more general -inquiries; and the bigoted controversialist, by dint of repeating a -certain formula of belief, shall not only convince himself that all -those who differ from him are undoubtedly wrong on that point, but that -their knowledge on all others must be comparatively slight and -superficial. We have known some very worthy and well-informed biblical -critics, who, by virtue of having discovered that one was not three, or -that the same body could not be in two places at once, would be disposed -to treat the whole Council of Trent, with Father Paul at their head, -with very little deference, and to consider Leo X. with all his court, -as no better than drivellers. Such persons will hint to you, as an -additional proof of his genius, that Milton was a non-conformist, and -will excuse the faults of Paradise Lost, as Dr. Johnson magnified them, -because the author was a republican. By the all-sufficiency of their -merits in believing certain truths which have been ‘hid from ages,’ they -are elevated, in their own imagination, to a higher sphere of intellect, -and are released from the necessity of pursuing the more ordinary tracks -of inquiry. Their faculties are imprisoned in a few favourite dogmas, -and they cannot break through the trammels of a sect. Hence we may -remark a hardness and setness in the ideas of those who have been -brought up in this way, an aversion to those finer and more delicate -operations of the intellect, of taste and genius, which require greater -flexibility and variety of thought, and do not afford the same -opportunity for dogmatical assertion and controversial cabal. The -distaste of the Puritans, Quakers, etc. to pictures, music, poetry, and -the fine arts in general, may be traced to this source as much as to -their affected disdain of them, as not sufficiently spiritual and remote -from the gross impurity of sense.[40] - -We learn from the interest we take in things, and according to the -number of things in which we take an interest. Our ignorance of the real -value of different objects and pursuits, will in general keep pace with -our contempt for them. To set out with denying common sense to every one -else, is not the way to be wise ourselves; nor shall we be likely to -learn much, if we suppose that no one can teach us any thing worth -knowing. Again, a contempt for the habits and manners of the world is as -prejudicial as a contempt for their opinions. A puritanical abhorrence -of every thing that does not fall in with our immediate prejudices and -customs, must effectually cut us off, not only from a knowledge of the -world and of human nature, but of good and evil, of vice and virtue; at -least, if we can credit the assertion of Plato, (which, to some degree, -we do), that the knowledge of every thing implies the knowledge of its -opposite. ‘There is some soul of goodness in things evil.’ A most -respectable sect among ourselves (we mean the Quakers) have carried this -system of negative qualities nearly to perfection. They labour -diligently, and with great success, to exclude all ideas from their -minds which they might have in common with others. On the principle that -evil communications corrupt good manners, they retain a virgin purity of -understanding, and laudable ignorance of all liberal arts and sciences; -they take every precaution, and keep up a perpetual quarantine against -the infection of other people’s vices—or virtues; they pass through the -world like figures cut out of pasteboard or wood, turning neither to the -right nor the left; and their minds are no more affected by the example -of the follies, the pursuits, the pleasures, or the passions of mankind, -than the clothes which they wear. Their ideas want _airing_; they are -the worse for not being used: for fear of soiling them, they keep them -folded up and laid by in a sort of mental clothes-press, through the -whole of their lives. They take their notions on trust from one -generation to another, (like the scanty cut of their coats), and are so -wrapped up in these traditional maxims, and so pin their faith on them, -that one of the most intelligent of this class of people, not long ago, -assured us that ‘war was a thing that was going quite out of fashion’! -This abstract sort of existence may have its advantages, but it takes -away all the ordinary sources of a moral imagination, as well as -strength of intellect. Interest is the only link that connects them with -the world. We can understand the high enthusiasm and religious devotion -of monks and anchorites, who gave up the world and its pleasures to -dedicate themselves to a sublime contemplation of a future state. But -the sect of the Quakers, who have transplanted the maxims of the desert -into manufacturing towns and populous cities, who have converted the -solitary cells of the religious orders into counting-houses, their beads -into ledgers, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account between -this world and the next, puzzle us mightily! The Dissenter is not vain, -but conceited: that is, he makes up by his own good opinion for the want -of the cordial admiration of others. But this often stands their -self-love in so good stead that they need not envy their dignified -opponents who repose on lawn sleeves and ermine. The unmerited obloquy -and dislike to which they are exposed has made them cold and reserved in -their intercourse with society. The same cause will account for the -dryness and general homeliness of their style. They labour under a sense -of the want of public sympathy. They pursue truth, for its own sake, -into its private recesses and obscure corners. They have to dig their -way along a narrow under-ground passage. It is not their object to -shine; they have none of the usual incentives of vanity, light, airy, -and ostentatious. Archiepiscopal Sees and mitres do not glitter in their -distant horizon. They are not wafted on the wings of fancy, fanned by -the breath of popular applause. The voice of the world, the tide of -opinion, is not with them. They do not therefore aim at _éclat_, at -outward pomp and shew. They have a plain ground to work upon, and they -do not attempt to embellish it with idle ornaments. It would be in vain -to strew the flowers of poetry round the borders of the Unitarian -controversy. - -There is one quality common to all sectaries, and that is, a principle -of strong fidelity. They are the safest partisans, and the steadiest -friends. Indeed, they are almost the only people who have any idea of an -abstract attachment either to a cause or to individuals, from a sense of -duty, independently of prosperous or adverse circumstances, and in spite -of opposition.[41] - - Z. - - - NO. 14.] ON JOHN BUNCLE [SEPT. 17, 1815. - -_John Buncle_ is the English _Rabelais_. This is an author with whom, -perhaps, many of our readers are not acquainted, and whom we therefore -wish to introduce to their notice. As most of our countrymen delight in -English Generals and in English Admirals, in English Courtiers and in -English Kings, so our great delight is in English authors. - -The soul of Francis Rabelais passed into John Amory, the author of _The -Life and Adventures of John Buncle_. Both were physicians, and enemies -of too much gravity. Their great business was to enjoy life. Rabelais -indulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried neats’ tongues, in -Bologna sausages, in botargos. John Buncle shews the same symptoms of -inordinate satisfaction in tea and bread and butter. While Rabelais -roared with Friar John and the Monks, John Buncle gossiped with the -ladies; and with equal and uncontrolled gaiety. These two authors -possessed all the insolence of health, so that their works give a fillip -to the constitution; but they carried off the exuberance of their -natural spirits in different ways. The title of one of Rabelais’ -chapters (and the contents answer to the title) is—‘How they chirped -over their cups.’ The title of a corresponding chapter in John Buncle -would run thus: ‘The author is invited to spend the evening with the -divine Miss Hawkins, and goes accordingly, with the delightful -conversation that ensued.’ Natural philosophers are said to extract -sun-beams from ice: our author has performed the same feat upon the -cold, quaint subtleties of theology. His constitutional alacrity -overcomes every obstacle. He converts the thorns and briars of -controversial divinity into a bed of roses. He leads the most refined -and virtuous of their sex through the mazes of inextricable problems -with the air of a man walking a minuet in a drawing-room; mixes up in -the most natural and careless manner the academy of compliments with the -rudiments of algebra; or passes with rapturous indifference from the -First of St. John and a disquisition on the Logos, to the no less -metaphysical doctrines of the principle of self-preservation, or the -continuation of the species. _John Buncle_ is certainly one of the most -singular productions in the language; and herein lies its peculiarity. -It is a Unitarian romance; and one in which the soul and body are -equally attended to. The hero is a great philosopher, mathematician, -anatomist, chemist, philologist, and divine, with a good appetite, the -best spirits, and an amorous constitution, who sets out on a series of -strange adventures to propagate his philosophy, his divinity, and his -species, and meets with a constant succession of accomplished females, -adorned with equal beauty, wit, and virtue, who are always ready to -discuss all kinds of theoretical and practical points with him. His -angels (and all his women are angels) have all taken their degrees in -more than one science: love is natural to them. He is sure to find - - ‘A mistress and a saint in every grove.’ - -Pleasure and business, wisdom and mirth, take their turns with the most -agreeable regularity. _A jocis ad seria, in seriis vicissim ad jocos -transire._ After a chapter of calculations in fluxions, or on the -descent of tongues, the lady and gentleman fall from Platonics to -hoydening, in a manner as truly edifying as anything in the scenes of -Vanbrugh or Sir George Etherege. No writer ever understood so well the -art of relief. The effect is like travelling in Scotland, and coming all -of a sudden to a spot of habitable ground. His mode of making love is -admirable. He takes it quite easily, and never thinks of a refusal. His -success gives him confidence, and his confidence gives him success. For -example: in the midst of one of his rambles in the mountains of -Cumberland, he unexpectedly comes to an elegant country-seat, where, -walking on the lawn with a book in her hand, he sees a most enchanting -creature, the owner of the mansion: our hero is on fire, leaps the ha-ha -which separates them, presents himself before the lady with an easy but -respectful air, begs to know the subject of her meditation, they enter -into conversation, mutual explanations take place, a declaration of love -is made, and the wedding-day is fixed for the following Tuesday. Our -author now leads a life of perfect happiness with his beautiful Miss -Noel, in a charming solitude, for a few weeks; till, on his return from -one of his rambles in the mountains, he finds her a corpse. He ‘_sits -with his eyes shut for seven days_,’ absorbed in silent grief; he then -bids adieu to melancholy reflections, not being one of that sect of -philosophers who think that ‘man was made to mourn,’—takes horse and -sets out for the nearest watering-place. As he alights at the first inn -on the road, a lady dressed in a rich green riding-habit steps out of a -coach, John Buncle hands her into the inn, they drink tea together, they -converse, they find an exact harmony of sentiment, a declaration of love -follows as a matter of course, and that day week they are married. -Death, however, contrives to keep up the ball for him; he marries seven -wives in succession, and buries them all. In short, John Buncle’s -gravity sat upon him with the happiest indifference possible. He danced -the hays with religion and morality with the ease of a man of fashion -and of pleasure. He was determined to see fair-play between grace and -nature, between his immortal and his mortal part, and in case of any -difficulty, upon the principle of ‘first come, first served,’ made sure -of the present hour. We sometimes suspect him of a little hypocrisy, but -upon a closer inspection, it appears to be only an affectation of -hypocrisy. His fine constitution comes to his relief, and floats him -over the shoals and quicksands that lie in his way, ‘most dolphin-like.’ -You see him from mere happiness of nature chuckling with inward -satisfaction in the midst of his periodical penances, his grave -grimaces, his death’s-heads, and _memento moris_. - - ——‘And there the antic sits - Mocking his state, and grinning at his pomp.’ - -As men make use of olives to give a relish to their wine, so John Buncle -made use of philosophy to give a relish to life. He stops in a ball-room -at Harrowgate to moralise on the small number of faces that appeared -there out of those he remembered some years before: all were gone whom -he saw at a still more distant period; but this casts no damper on his -spirits, and he only dances the longer and better for it. He suffers -nothing unpleasant to remain long upon his mind. He gives, in one place, -a miserable description of two emaciated valetudinarians whom he met at -an inn, supping a little mutton-broth with difficulty, but he -immediately contrasts himself with them in fine relief. ‘While I beheld -things with astonishment, the servant,’ he says, ‘brought in dinner—a -pound of rump-steaks and a quart of green peas, two cuts of bread, a -tankard of strong beer, and a pint of port-wine; _with a fine appetite, -I soon despatched my mess, and over my wine, to help digestion, began to -sing the following lines_!’ The astonishment of the two strangers was -now as great as his own had been. - -We wish to enable our readers to judge for themselves of the style of -our whimsical moralist, but are at a loss what to chuse—whether his -account of his man O’Fin; or of his friend Tom Fleming; or of his being -chased over the mountains by robbers, ‘whisking before them like the -wind away,’ as if it were high sport; or his address to the Sun, which -is an admirable piece of serious eloquence; or his character of six -Irish gentlemen, Mr. Gollogher, Mr. Gallaspy, Mr. Dunkley, Mr. Makins, -Mr. Monaghan, and Mr. O’Keefe, the last ‘descended from the Irish kings, -and first cousin to the great O’Keefe, who was buried not long ago in -Westminster Abbey.’ He professes to give an account of these Irish -gentlemen, ‘for the honour of Ireland, and as they were curiosities of -the human kind.’ Curiosities, indeed, but not so great as their -historian! - -‘Mr. Makins was the only one of the set who was not tall and handsome. -He was a very low, thin man, not four feet high, and had but one eye, -with which he squinted most shockingly. But as he was matchless on the -fiddle, sung well, and chatted agreeably, he was a favourite with the -ladies. They preferred ugly Makins (as he was called) to many very -handsome men. He was a Unitarian.’ - -‘Mr. Monaghan was an honest and charming fellow. This gentleman and Mr. -Dunkley married ladies they fell in love with at Harrowgate Wells; -Dunkley had the fair Alcmena, Miss Cox of Northumberland; and Monaghan, -Antiope with haughty charms, Miss Pearson of Cumberland. They lived very -happy many years, and their children, I hear, are settled in Ireland.’ - -Gentle reader, here is the character of Mr. Gallaspy: - -‘Gallaspy was the tallest and strongest man I have ever seen, well made, -and very handsome: had wit and abilities, sung well, and talked with -great sweetness and fluency, but was so extremely wicked that it were -better for him if he had been a natural fool. By his vast strength and -activity, his riches and eloquence, few things could withstand him. He -was the most profane swearer I have known: fought every thing, whored -every thing, and drank seven in hand: that is, seven glasses so placed -between the fingers of his right hand, that, in drinking, the liquor -fell into the next glasses, and thereby he drank out of the first glass -seven glasses at once. This was a common thing, I find from a book in my -possession, in the reign of Charles II., in the madness that followed -the restoration of that profligate and worthless prince.[42] But this -gentleman was the only man I ever saw who could or would attempt to do -it; and he made but one gulp of whatever he drank. He did not swallow a -fluid like other people, but if it was a quart, poured it in as from -pitcher to pitcher. When he smoked tobacco, he always blew two pipes at -once, one at each corner of his mouth, and threw the smoke out at both -his nostrils. He had killed two men in duels before I left Ireland, and -would have been hanged, but that it was his good fortune to be tried -before a judge who never let any man suffer for killing another in this -manner. (This was the late Sir John St. Leger.) He debauched all the -women he could, and many whom he could not corrupt....’ The rest of this -passage would, we fear, be too rich for the Round Table, as we cannot -insert it, in the manner of Mr. Buncle, in a sandwich of theology. -Suffice it to say, that the candour is greater than the candour of -Voltaire’s _Candide_, and the modesty equal to Colley Cibber’s. - -To his friend Mr. Gollogher, he consecrates the following irresistible -_petit souvenir_: - -‘He might, if he had pleased, have married any one of the most -illustrious and richest women in the kingdom; but he had an aversion to -matrimony, and could not bear the thoughts of a wife. Love and a bottle -were his taste: he was, however, the most honourable of men in his -amours, and never abandoned any woman in distress, as too many men of -fortune do, when they have gratified desire. All the distressed were -ever sharers in Mr. Gollogher’s fine estate, and especially the girls he -had taken to his breast. He provided happily for them all, and left -nineteen daughters he had by several women, a thousand pounds each. This -was acting with a temper worthy of a man; _and to the memory of the -benevolent Tom Gollogher, I devote this memorandum_.’ - -Lest our readers should form rather a coarse idea of our author from the -foregoing passages, we will conclude with another list of friends in a -different style: - -‘The Conniving-house (as the gentlemen of Trinity called it in my time, -and long after) was a little public-house, kept by Jack Macklean, about -a quarter of a mile beyond Rings-end, on the top of the beach, within a -few yards of the sea. Here we used to have the finest fish at all times; -and, in the season, green peas, and all the most excellent vegetables. -The ale here was always extraordinary, and everything the best; which, -with its delightful situation, rendered it a delightful place of a -summer’s evening. Many a delightful evening have I passed in this pretty -thatched house with the famous Larry Grogan, who played on the bagpipes -extremely well; dear Jack Lattin, matchless on the fiddle, and the most -agreeable of companions; that ever-charming young fellow, Jack Wall, the -most worthy, the most ingenious, the most engaging of men, the son of -Counsellor Maurice Wall; and many other delightful fellows, who went in -the days of their youth to the shades of eternity. When I think of them -and their evening songs—‘_We will go to Johnny Macklean’s, to try if his -ale be good or no_,’ etc. and that years and infirmities begin to -oppress me—What is life!’ - -We have another English author, very different from the last mentioned -one, but equal in _naïveté_, and in the perfect display of personal -character; we mean Isaac Walton, who wrote the _Complete Angler_. That -well-known work has an extreme simplicity, and an extreme interest, -arising out of its very simplicity. In the description of a fishing -tackle you perceive the piety and humanity of the author’s mind. This is -the best pastoral in the language, not excepting Pope’s or Philips’s. We -doubt whether Sannazarius’s _Piscatory Eclogues_ are equal to the scenes -described by Walton on the banks of the River Lea. He gives the feeling -of the open air. We walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on -the banks of the river under a shady tree, and in watching for the finny -prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls ‘the patience and simplicity of -poor, honest fishermen.’ We accompany them to their inn at night, and -partake of their simple but delicious fare, while Maud, the pretty -milkmaid, at her mother’s desire, sings the classical ditties of Sir -Walter Raleigh. Good cheer is not neglected in this work, any more than -in _John Buncle_, or any other history which sets a proper value on the -good things of life. The prints in the _Complete Angler_ give an -additional reality and interest to the scenes it describes. While -Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy work, amiable and happy old -man, shall last![43] - - W. H. - - - NO. 15.] ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM [OCT. 22, 1815. - -The first Methodist on record was David. He was the first eminent person -we read of, who made a regular compromise between religion and morality, -between faith and good works. After any trifling peccadillo in point of -conduct, as a murder, adultery, perjury, or the like, he ascended with -his harp into some high tower of his palace; and having chaunted, in a -solemn strain of poetical inspiration, the praises of piety and virtue, -made his peace with heaven and his own conscience. This extraordinary -genius, in the midst of his personal errors, retained the same lofty -abstract enthusiasm for the favourite objects of his contemplation; the -character of the poet and the prophet remained unimpaired by the vices -of the man— - - ‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind’; - -and the best test of the soundness of his principles and the elevation -of his sentiments, is, that they were proof against his practice. The -Gnostics afterwards maintained, that it was no matter what a man’s -actions were, so that his understanding was not debauched by them—so -that his opinions continued uncontaminated, and _his heart_, as the -phrase is, _right towards God_. Strictly speaking, this sect (whatever -name it might go by) is as old as human nature itself; for it has -existed ever since there was a contradiction between the passions and -the understanding—between what we are, and what we desire to be. The -principle of Methodism is nearly allied to hypocrisy, and almost -unavoidably slides into it: yet it is not the same thing; for we can -hardly call any one a hypocrite, however much at variance his -professions and his actions, who really wishes to be what he would be -thought. - -The Jewish bard, whom we have placed at the head of this class of -devotees, was of a sanguine and robust temperament. Whether he chose ‘to -sinner it or saint it,’ he did both most royally, with a fulness of -gusto, and carried off his penances and his _faux-pas_ in a style of -oriental grandeur. This is by no means the character of his followers -among ourselves, who are a most pitiful set. They may rather be -considered as a collection of religious invalids; as the refuse of all -that is weak and unsound in body and mind. To speak of them as they -deserve, they are not well in the flesh, and therefore they take refuge -in the spirit; they are not comfortable here, and they seek for the life -to come; they are deficient in steadiness of moral principle, and they -trust to grace to make up the deficiency; they are dull and gross in -apprehension, and therefore they are glad to substitute faith for -reason, and to plunge in the dark, under the supposed sanction of -superior wisdom, into every species of mystery and jargon. This is the -history of Methodism, which may be defined to be religion with its -slobbering-bib and go-cart. It is a bastard kind of Popery, stripped of -its painted pomp and outward ornaments, and reduced to a state of -pauperism. ‘The whole need not a physician.’ Popery owed its success to -its constant appeal to the senses and to the weaknesses of mankind. The -Church of England deprives the Methodists of the pride and pomp of the -Romish Church; but it has left open to them the appeal to the indolence, -the ignorance, and the vices of the people; and the secret of the -success of the Catholic faith and evangelical preaching is the same—both -are a religion by proxy. What the one did by auricular confession, -absolution, penance, pictures, and crucifixes, the other does, even more -compendiously, by grace, election, faith without works, and words -without meaning. - -In the first place, the same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast -that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way, an uncomfortable mind -in an uncomfortable body. Poets, authors, and artists in general, have -been ridiculed for a pining, puritanical, poverty-struck appearance, -which has been attributed to their real poverty. But it would perhaps be -nearer the truth to say, that their being poets, artists, etc. has been -owing to their original poverty of spirit and weakness of constitution. -As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves, will seek -to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health -and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are ‘in favour -with their stars,’ and have a thorough relish of the good things of this -life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the Muses. -Sedentary, nervous, hypochondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, -for want of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out for a -more airy food and speculative comforts. ‘Conceit in weakest bodies -strongest works.’ A journeyman sign-painter, whose lungs have imbibed -too great a quantity of the effluvia of white-lead, will be seized with -a fantastic passion for the stage; and _Mawworm_, tired of standing -behind his counter, was eager to mount a tub, mistaking the suppression -of his animal spirits for the communication of the Holy Ghost![44] If -you live near a chapel or tabernacle in London, you may almost always -tell, from physiognomical signs, which of the passengers will turn the -corner to go there. We were once staying in a remote place in the -country, where a chapel of this sort had been erected by the force of -missionary zeal; and one morning, we perceived a long procession of -people coming from the next town to the consecration of this same -chapel. Never was there such a set of scarecrows. Melancholy tailors, -consumptive hair-dressers, squinting cobblers, women with child or in -the ague, made up the forlorn hope of the pious cavalcade. The pastor of -this half-starved flock, we confess, came riding after, with a more -goodly aspect, as if he had ‘with sound of bell been knolled to church, -and sat at good men’s feasts.’ He had in truth lately married a thriving -widow, and been pampered with hot suppers to strengthen the flesh and -the spirit. We have seen several of these ‘round fat oily men of God, - - “That shone all glittering with ungodly dew.”’ - -They grow sleek and corpulent by getting into better pasture, but they -do not appear healthy. They retain the original sin of their -constitution, an atrabilious taint in their complexion, and do not put a -right-down, hearty, honest, good-looking face upon the matter, like the -regular clergy. - -Again, Methodism, by its leading doctrines, has a peculiar charm for all -those, who have an equal facility in sinning and repenting,—in whom the -spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,—who have neither fortitude to -withstand temptation, nor to silence the admonitions of conscience,—who -like the theory of religion better than the practice, and who are -willing to indulge in all the raptures of speculative devotion, without -being tied down to the dull, literal performance of its duties. There is -a general propensity in the human mind (even in the most vicious) to pay -virtue a distant homage; and this desire is only checked by the fear of -condemning ourselves by our own acknowledgments. What an admirable -expedient then in ‘that burning and shining light,’ Whitefield, and his -associates, to make this very disposition to admire and extol the -highest patterns of goodness, a substitute for, instead of an obligation -to, the practice of virtue, to allow us to be quit for ‘the vice that -most easily besets us,’ by canting lamentations over the depravity of -human nature, and loud hosannahs to the Son of David! How comfortably -this doctrine must sit on all those who are loth to give up old habits -of vice, or are just tasting the sweets of new ones; on the withered hag -who looks back on a life of dissipation, or the young devotee who looks -forward to a life of pleasure; the knavish tradesman retiring from -business or entering on it; the battered rake; the sneaking politician, -who trims between his place and his conscience, wriggling between heaven -and earth, a miserable two-legged creature, with sanctified face and -fawning gestures; the maudling sentimentalist, the religious prostitute, -the disinterested poet-laureate, the humane war-contractor, or the -Society for the Suppression of Vice! This scheme happily turns morality -into a sinecure, takes all the practical drudgery and trouble off your -hands, ‘and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words.’ Its proselytes -besiege the gates of heaven, like sturdy beggars about the doors of the -great, lie and bask in the sunshine of divine grace, sigh and groan and -bawl out for mercy, expose their sores and blotches to excite -commiseration, and cover the deformities of their nature with a garb of -borrowed righteousness! - -The jargon and nonsense which are so studiously inculcated in the -system, are another powerful recommendation of it to the vulgar. It does -not impose any tax upon the understanding. Its essence is to be -unintelligible. It is _carte blanche_ for ignorance and folly! Those, -‘numbers without number,’ who are either unable or unwilling to think -connectedly or rationally on any subject, are at once released from -every obligation of the kind, by being told that faith and reason are -opposed to one another, and the greater the impossibility, the greater -the merit of the faith. A set of phrases which, without conveying any -distinct idea, excite our wonder, our fear, our curiosity and desires, -which let loose the imagination of the gaping multitude, and confound -and baffle common sense, are the common stock-in-trade of the -conventicle. They never stop for the distinctions of the understanding, -and have thus got the start of other sects, who are so hemmed in with -the necessity of giving reasons for their opinions, that they cannot get -on at all. ‘Vital Christianity’ is no other than an attempt to lower all -religion to the level of the capacities of the lowest of the people. One -of their favourite places of worship combines the noise and turbulence -of a drunken brawl at an ale-house, with the indecencies of a bagnio. -They strive to gain a vertigo by abandoning their reason, and give -themselves up to the intoxications of a distempered zeal, that - - ‘Dissolves them into ecstasies, - And brings all heaven before their eyes.’ - -Religion, without superstition, will not answer the purposes of -fanaticism, and we may safely say, that almost every sect of -Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the -prejudices of the world. The Methodists have greased the boots of the -Presbyterians, and they have done well. While the latter are weighing -their doubts and scruples to the division of a hair, and shivering on -the narrow brink that divides philosophy from religion, the former -plunge without remorse into hell-flames, soar on the wings of divine -love, are carried away with the motions of the spirit, are lost in the -abyss of unfathomable mysteries,—election, reprobation, -predestination,—and revel in a sea of boundless nonsense. It is a gulf -that swallows up every thing. The cold, the calculating, and the dry, -are not to the taste of the many; religion is an anticipation of the -preternatural world, and it in general requires preternatural -excitements to keep it alive. If it takes a definite consistent form, it -loses its interest: to produce its effect it must come in the shape of -an apparition. Our quacks treat grown people as the nurses do -children;—terrify them with what they have no idea of, or take them to a -puppet-show. - - W. H. - - - NO. 16.] ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM [NOV. 26, 1815. - -Bottom the weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He -is the most romantic of mechanics. And what a list of companions he -has—_Quince_ the carpenter, _Snug_ the joiner, _Flute_ the -bellows-mender, _Snout_ the tinker, _Starveling_ the tailor; and then, -again, what a group of fairy attendants, _Puck_, _Peaseblossom_, -_Cobweb_, _Moth_, and _Mustard-seed_! It has been observed that -Shakspeare’s characters are constructed upon deep physiological -principles; and there is something in this play which looks very like -it. _Bottom_ the weaver, who takes the lead of - - ‘This crew of patches, rude mechanicals, - That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,’ - -follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as -conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake any thing -and every thing, as if it was as much a matter of course as the motion -of his loom and shuttle. He is for playing the tyrant, the lover, the -lady, the lion. ‘He will roar that it shall do any man’s heart good to -hear him’; and this being objected to as improper, he still has a -resource in his good opinion of himself, and ‘will roar you an ‘twere -any nightingale.’ _Snug_ the joiner is the moral man of the piece, who -proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him with -his rule and compasses in his hand. ‘Have you the lion’s part written? -Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.’ ‘You may do it -extempore,’ says _Quince_, ‘for it is nothing but roaring.’ _Starveling_ -the tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the lion and the drawn sword: -‘I believe we must leave the killing out, when all’s done.’ -_Starveling_, however, does not start the objections himself, but -seconds them when made by others, as if he had not spirit to express his -fears without encouragement. It is too much to suppose all this -intentional: but it very luckily falls out so. Nature includes all that -is implied in the most subtle and analytical distinctions; and the same -distinctions will be found in Shakspeare. _Bottom_, who is not only -chief actor, but stage-manager for the occasion, has a device to obviate -the danger of frightening the ladies: ‘Write me a prologue, and let the -prologue seem to say, we will do him no harm with our swords, and that -Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for better assurance, tell them that -I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver; this will put them -out of fear.’ _Bottom_ seems to have understood the subject of dramatic -illusion at least as well as any modern essayist. If our holiday -mechanic rules the roast among his fellows, he is no less at home in his -new character of an ass, ‘with amiable cheeks and fair large ears.’ He -instinctively acquires a most learned taste, and grows fastidious in the -choice of dried peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his new -attendants, and assigns them their parts with all due gravity. ‘Monsieur -_Cobweb_, good Monsieur, get your weapon in your hand, and kill me a -red-hipt humble bee on the top of a thistle, and good Monsieur, bring me -the honey-bag.’ What an exact knowledge is shewn here of natural -history! - -_Puck_ or _Robin Goodfellow_ is the leader of the fairy band. He is the -_Ariel_ of the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_; and yet as unlike as can be to -the _Ariel_ in the _Tempest_. No other poet could have made two such -different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. -_Ariel_ is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of -pity at the woes he inflicts. _Puck_ is a mad-cap sprite, full of -wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads: ‘Lord, -what fools these mortals be!’ _Ariel_ cleaves the air, and executes his -mission with the zeal of a winged messenger: _Puck_ is borne along on -his fairy errand, like the light and glittering gossamer before the -breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epicurean little gentleman, dealing in -quaint devices, and faring in dainty delights. _Prospero_ and his world -of spirits are a set of moralists: but with _Oberon_ and his fairies we -are launched at once into the empire of the butterflies. How beautifully -is this race of beings contrasted with the men and women actors in the -scene, by a single epithet which _Titania_ gives to the latter, ‘the -human mortals’! It is astonishing that Shakspeare should be considered, -not only by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and -heavy writer, who painted nothing but ‘Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras -dire.’ His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch -that a celebrated person of the present day said, that he regarded him -rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety -are infinite. In the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ alone, we should imagine, -there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole -range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will -produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think -any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, -displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of -_Helena_ to _Hermia_, or _Titania’s_ description of her fairy train, or -her disputes with _Oberon_ about the Indian boy, or _Puck’s_ account of -himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen’s exhortation to the -elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite _Bottom_,[45] or -_Hippolyta’s_ description of a chace, or _Theseus’s_ answer? The two -last are as heroical and spirited, as the others are full of luscious -tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by -moonlight: the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from -beds of flowers. - -Shakspeare is almost the only poet of whom it may be said, that - - ‘Age cannot wither, nor custom stale - His infinite variety.’ - -His nice touches of individual character, and marking of its different -gradations, have been often admired; but the instances have not been -exhausted, because they are inexhaustible. We will mention two which -occur to us. One is where _Christopher Sly_ expresses his approbation of -the play, by saying, ‘’Tis a good piece of work, would ‘twere done,’ as -if he were thinking of his Saturday night’s job. Again, there cannot -well be a finer gradation of character than that in Henry IV. between -_Falstaff_ and _Shallow_, and _Shallow_ and _Silence_. It seems -difficult to fall lower than the Squire; but this fool, great as he is, -finds an admirer and humble foil in his cousin _Silence_. Vain of his -acquaintance with _Sir John_, who makes a butt of him, he exclaims, -‘Would, cousin _Silence_, that thou had’st seen that which this Knight -and I have seen!’ ‘Aye, master _Shallow_, we have heard the chimes at -midnight,’ says _Sir John_. The true spirit of humanity, the thorough -knowledge of the stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with the -seeming fooleries, in the whole of this exquisite scene, and afterwards -in the dialogue on the death of old _Double_, have no parallel anywhere -else. - -It has been suggested to us, that the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ would do -admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter -proposes that Mr. Kean should play the part of _Bottom_, as worthy of -his great talents. He might offer to play the lady like any of our -actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our -actors that he pleased, and the lion like ‘the most fearful wild fowl -living.’ The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner, would hit the galleries. -The young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes, and _Robin -Goodfellow_ and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the -children from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an -empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their -attendants, and with all their finery. What an opportunity for -processions, for the sound of trumpets, and glittering of spears! What a -fluttering of urchins’ painted wings; what a delightful profusion of -gauze clouds, and airy spirits floating on them! It would be a complete -English fairy tale. - - W. H. - - - NO. 17.] ON THE BEGGAR’S OPERA [JUNE 18, 1815. - -We have begun this Essay on a very coarse sheet of damaged foolscap, and -we find that we are going to write it, whether for the sake of contrast, -or from having a very fine pen, in a remarkably nice hand. Something of -a similar process seems to have taken place in Gay’s mind, when he -composed his _Beggar’s Opera_. He chose a very unpromising ground to -work upon, and he has prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, -the precision and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this -a vulgar play. So far from it, that we do not scruple to declare our -opinion that it is one of the most refined productions in the language. -The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness -of the materials: by ‘happy alchemy of mind,’ the author has extracted -an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its -very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in -themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the -sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, -turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted this -motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and -philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once -violating probability, or ‘o’erstepping the modesty of nature.’ In fact -Gay has turned the tables on the critics; and by the assumed licence of -the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to _do justice to nature_, -that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to -the thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false -taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of the song, -‘Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,’ is only equalled by its -characteristic propriety and _naïveté_. It may be said that this is -taken from Tibullus; but there is nothing about Covent Garden in -Tibullus. _Polly_ describes her lover going to the gallows with the same -touching simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl -in her circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing -but the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of -her affections. ‘I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand: the -admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely -end:—even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than -consent to tie the fatal knot.’ The preservation of the character and -costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority, ‘There is -some soul of goodness in things evil’: and the _Beggar’s Opera_ is a -good-natured but instructive comment on this text. The poet has thrown -all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the intoxication of -pleasure, and the vanity of despair, round the short-lived existence of -his heroes; while _Peachum_ and _Lockitt_ are seen in the back-ground, -parcelling out their months and weeks between them. The general view -exhibited of human life, is of the most masterly and abstracted kind. -The author has, with great felicity, brought out the good qualities and -interesting emotions almost inseparable from the lowest conditions; and -with the same penetrating glance has detected the disguises which rank -and circumstances lend to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling -comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The -very wit, however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire; and -we have seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying -the joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as -not much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of -life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort -of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the moral of -the piece is to show the _vulgarity_ of vice; and that the same -violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in -palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and -powerful, with the lowest and most contemptible of the species. What can -be more convincing than the arguments used by these would-be -politicians, to shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they -do not come up to many of their betters? The exclamation of _Mrs. -Peachum_, when her daughter marries _Macheath_, ‘Hussey, hussey, you -will be as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married a -lord,’ is worth all Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives on the laxity -of the manners of high life![46] - - W. H. - - - NO. 18.] ON PATRIOTISM.—A FRAGMENT [JAN. 5, 1814. - -Patriotism, in modern times, and in great states, is and must be the -creature of reason and reflection, rather than the offspring of physical -or local attachment. Our country is a complex, abstract existence, -recognised only by the understanding. It is an immense riddle, -containing numberless modifications of reason and prejudice, of thought -and passion. Patriotism is not, in a strict or exclusive sense, a -natural or personal affection, but a law of our rational and moral -nature, strengthened and determined by particular circumstances and -associations, but not born of them, nor wholly nourished by them. It is -not possible that we should have an individual attachment to sixteen -millions of men, any more than to sixty millions. We cannot be -_habitually_ attached to places we never saw, and people we never heard -of. Is not the name of Englishman a general term, as well as that of -man? How many varieties does it not combine within it? Are the opposite -extremities of the globe our native place, because they are a part of -that geographical and political denomination, our country? Does natural -affection expand in circles of latitude and longitude? What personal or -instinctive sympathy has the English peasant with the African -slave-driver, or East Indian Nabob? Some of our wretched bunglers in -metaphysics would fain persuade us to discard all general humanity, and -all sense of abstract justice, as a violation of natural affection, and -yet do not see that the love of our country itself is in the list of our -general affections. The common notions of patriotism are transmitted -down to us from the savage tribes, where the fate and condition of all -was the same, or from the states of Greece and Rome, where the country -of the citizen was the town in which he was born. Where this is no -longer the case,—where our country is no longer contained within the -narrow circle of the same walls,—where we can no longer behold its -glimmering horizon from the top of our native mountains—beyond these -limits, it is not a natural but an artificial idea, and our love of it -either a deliberate dictate of reason, or a cant term. It was said by an -acute observer, and eloquent writer (Rousseau) that the love of mankind -was nothing but the love of justice: the same might be said, with -considerable truth, of the love of our country. It is little more than -another name for the love of liberty, of independence, of peace, and -social happiness. We do not say that other indirect and collateral -circumstances do not go to the superstructure of this sentiment (as -language,[47] literature, manners, national customs), but this is the -broad and firm basis. - - - NO. 19.] ON BEAUTY [FEB. 4, 1816. - -It is about sixty years ago that Sir Joshua Reynolds, in three papers -which he wrote in the _Idler_, advanced the notion, which has prevailed -very much ever since, that Beauty was entirely dependent on custom, or -on the conformity of objects to a given standard. Now, we could never -persuade ourselves that custom, or the association of ideas, though a -very powerful, was the only principle of the preference which the mind -gives to certain objects over others. Novelty is surely one source of -pleasure; otherwise we cannot account for the well-known epigram, -beginning— - - ‘Two happy things in marriage are allowed,’ etc. - -Nor can we help thinking, that, besides custom, or the conformity of -certain objects to others of the same general class, there is also a -certain conformity of objects to themselves, a symmetry of parts, a -principle of proportion, gradation, harmony (call it what you will), -which makes certain things naturally pleasing or beautiful, and the want -of it the contrary. - -We will not pretend to define what Beauty is, after so many learned -authors have failed; but we shall attempt to give some examples of what -constitutes it, to shew that it is in some way inherent in the object, -and that if custom is a second nature, there is another nature which -ranks before it. Indeed, the idea that all pleasure and pain depend on -the association of ideas is manifestly absurd: there must be something -in itself pleasurable or painful, before it could become possible for -the feelings of pleasure or pain to be transferred by association from -one object to another. - -Regular features are generally accounted handsome; but regular features -are those, the outlines of which answer most nearly to each other, or -undergo the fewest abrupt changes. We shall attempt to explain this idea -by a reference to the Greek and African face; the first of which is -beautiful, because it is made up of lines corresponding with or melting -into each other: the last is not so, because it is made up almost -entirely of contradictory lines and sharp angular projections. - -The general principle of the difference between the two heads is this: -the forehead of the Greek is square and upright, and, as it were, -overhangs the rest of the face, except the nose, which is a continuation -of it almost in an even line. In the Negro or African, the tip of the -nose is the most projecting part of the face; and from that point the -features retreat back, both upwards towards the forehead, and downwards -to the chin. This last form is an approximation to the shape of the head -of the animal, as the former bears the strongest stamp of humanity. - -The Grecian nose is regular, the African irregular. In other words, the -Grecian nose seen in profile forms nearly a straight line with the -forehead, and falls into the upper lip by two curves, which balance one -another: seen in front, the two sides are nearly parallel to each other, -and the nostrils and lower part form regular curves, answering to one -another, and to the contours of the mouth. On the contrary, the African -pug-nose is more ‘like an ace of clubs.’ Whichever way you look at it, -it presents the appearance of a triangle. It is narrow, and drawn to a -point at top, broad and flat at bottom. The point is peaked, and recedes -abruptly to the level of the forehead or the mouth, and the nostrils are -as if they were drawn up with hooks towards each other. All the lines -cross each other at sharp angles. The forehead of the Greeks is flat and -square, till it is rounded at the temples; the African forehead, like -the ape’s, falls back towards the top, and spreads out at the sides, so -as to form an angle with the cheek-bones. The eyebrows of the Greeks are -either straight, so as to sustain the lower part of the tablet of the -forehead, or gently arched, so as to form the outer circle of the curves -of the eyelids. The form of the eyes gives all the appearance of orbs, -full, swelling, and involved within each other; the African eyes are -flat, narrow at the corners, in the shape of a tortoise, and the -eyebrows fly off slantwise to the sides of the forehead. The idea of the -superiority of the Greek face in this respect is admirably expressed in -Spenser’s description of Belphœbe: - - ‘Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave, - Like a broad table did itself dispread, - For love therein his triumphs to engrave, - And write the battles of his great Godhead. - - . . . . . - - Upon her eyelids many Graces sat - Under the shadow of her even brows.’ - -The head of the girl in the _Transfiguration_ (which Raphael took from -the _Niobe_) has the same correspondence and exquisite involution of the -outline of the forehead, the eyebrows, and the eyes (circle within -circle) which we here speak of. Every part of that delightful head is -blended together, and every sharp projection moulded and softened down, -with the feeling of a sculptor, or as if nothing should be left to -offend the _touch_ as well as eye. Again, the Greek mouth is small, and -little wider than the lower part of the nose: the lips form waving -lines, nearly answering to each other; the African mouth is twice as -wide as the nose, projects in front, and falls back towards the ears—is -sharp and triangular, and consists of one protruding and one distended -lip. The chin of the Greek face is round and indented, curled in, -forming a fine oval with the outline of the cheeks, which resemble the -two halves of a plane parallel with the forehead, and rounded off like -it. The Negro chin falls inwards like a dew-lap, is nearly bisected in -the middle, flat at bottom, and joined abruptly to the rest of the face, -the whole contour of which is made up of jagged cross-grained lines. The -African physiognomy appears, indeed, splitting in pieces, starting out -in every oblique direction, and marked by the most sudden and violent -changes throughout: the whole of the Grecian face blends with itself in -a state of the utmost harmony and repose.[48] There is a harmony of -expression as well as a symmetry of form. We sometimes see a face -melting into beauty by the force of sentiment—an eye that, in its liquid -mazes, for ever expanding and for ever retiring within itself, draws the -soul after it, and tempts the rash beholder to his fate. This is, -perhaps, what Werter meant, when he says of Charlotte, ‘Her full dark -eyes are ever before me, like a sea, like a precipice.’ The historical -in expression is the consistent and harmonious,—whatever in thought or -feeling communicates the same movement, whether voluptuous or -impassioned, to all the parts of the face, the mouth, the eyes, the -forehead, and shews that they are all actuated by the same spirit. For -this reason it has been observed, that all intellectual and impassioned -faces are historical,—the heads of philosophers, poets, lovers, and -madmen. - -Motion is beautiful as it implies either continuity or gradual change. -The motion of a hawk is beautiful, either returning in endless circles -with suspended wings, or darting right forward in one level line upon -its prey. We have, when boys, often watched the glittering down of the -thistle, at first scarcely rising above the ground, and then, mingling -with the gale, borne into the upper sky with varying fantastic motion. -How delightful, how beautiful! All motion is beautiful that is not -contradictory to itself,—that is free from sudden jerks and shocks,—that -is either sustained by the same impulse, or gradually reconciles -different impulses together. Swans resting on the calm bosom of a lake, -in which their image is reflected, or moved up and down with the heaving -of the waves, though by this the double image is disturbed, are equally -beautiful. Homer describes Mercury as flinging himself from the top of -Olympus, and skimming the surface of the ocean. This is lost in Pope’s -translation, who suspends him on the incumbent air. The beauty of the -original image consists in the idea which it conveys of smooth, -uninterrupted speed, of the evasion of every let or obstacle to the -progress of the God.[49] Awkwardness is occasioned by a difficulty in -moving, or by disjointed movements, that distract the attention and -defeat each other. Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates -pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity. The only graceful -dancer we ever saw was Deshayes, the Frenchman. He came on bounding like -a stag. It was not necessary to have seen good dancing before to know -that this was really fine. Whoever has seen the sea in motion, the -branches of a tree waving in the air, would instantly perceive the -resemblance. Flexibility and grace are to be found in nature as well as -at the opera. Mr. Burke, in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, has -very admirably described the bosom of a beautiful woman, almost entirely -with reference to the ideas of motion. Those outlines are beautiful -which describe pleasant motions. A fine use is made of this principle by -one of the apocryphal writers, in describing the form of the rainbow. -‘He hath set his bow in the heavens, and his hands have bended it.’ -Harmony in colour has not been denied to be a natural property of -objects, consisting in the gradations of intermediate colours. The -principle appears to be here the same as in some of the former -instances. The effect of colour in Titian’s Bath of Diana, at the -Marquis of Stafford’s, is perhaps the finest in the world, made up of -the richest contrasts, blended together by the most masterly gradations. -Harmony of sound depends apparently on the same principle as harmony of -colour. Rhyme depends on the pleasure derived from a recurrence of -similar sounds, as symmetry of features does on the correspondence of -the different outlines. The prose style of Dr. Johnson originated in the -same principle. The secret consisted in rhyming on the sense, and -balancing one half of the sentence uniformly and systematically against -the other. The Hebrew poetry was constructed in the same manner. - - W. - - - NO. 20.] ON IMITATION [FEB. 18, 1816. - -Objects in themselves disagreeable or indifferent, often please in the -imitation. A brick-floor, a pewter-plate, an ugly cur barking, a Dutch -boor smoking or playing at skittles, the inside of a shambles, a -fishmonger’s or a greengrocer’s stall, have been made very interesting -as pictures by the fidelity, skill, and spirit, with which they have -been copied. One source of the pleasure thus received is undoubtedly the -surprise or feeling of admiration, occasioned by the unexpected -coincidence between the imitation and the object. The deception, -however, not only pleases at first sight, or from mere novelty; but it -continues to please upon farther acquaintance, and in proportion to the -insight we acquire into the distinctions of nature and of art. By far -the most numerous class of connoisseurs are the admirers of pictures of -_still life_, which have nothing but the elaborateness of the execution -to recommend them. One chief reason, it should seem then, why imitation -pleases, is, because, by exciting curiosity, and inviting a comparison -between the object and the representation, it opens a new field of -inquiry, and leads the attention to a variety of details and -distinctions not perceived before. This latter source of the pleasure -derived from imitation has never been properly insisted on. - -The anatomist is delighted with a coloured plate, conveying the exact -appearance of the progress of certain diseases, or of the internal parts -and dissections of the human body. We have known a Jennerian Professor -as much enraptured with a delineation of the different stages of -vaccination, as a florist with a bed of tulips, or an auctioneer with a -collection of Indian shells. But in this case, we find that not only the -imitation pleases,—the objects themselves give as much pleasure to the -professional inquirer, as they would pain to the uninitiated. The -learned amateur is struck with the beauty of the coats of the stomach -laid bare, or contemplates with eager curiosity the transverse section -of the brain, divided on the new Spurzheim principles. It is here, then, -the number of the parts, their distinctions, connections, structure, -uses; in short, an entire new set of ideas, which occupies the mind of -the student, and overcomes the sense of pain and repugnance, which is -the only feeling that the sight of a dead and mangled body presents to -ordinary men. It is the same in art as in science. The painter of still -life, as it is called, takes the same pleasure in the object as the -spectator does in the imitation; because by habit he is led to perceive -all those distinctions in nature, to which other persons never pay any -attention till they are pointed out to them in the picture. The vulgar -only see nature as it is reflected to them from art; the painter sees -the picture in nature, before he transfers it to the canvass. He -refines, he analyses, he remarks fifty things, which escape common eyes; -and this affords a distinct source of reflection and amusement to him, -independently of the beauty or grandeur of the objects themselves, or of -their connection with other impressions besides those of sight. The -charm of the Fine Arts, then, does not consist in any thing peculiar to -imitation, even where only imitation is concerned, since _there_, where -art exists in the highest perfection, namely, in the mind of the artist, -the object excites the same or greater pleasure, before the imitation -exists. Imitation renders an object, displeasing in itself, a source of -pleasure, not by repetition of the same idea, but by suggesting new -ideas, by detecting new properties, and endless shades of difference, -just as a close and continued contemplation of the object itself would -do. Art shows us nature, divested of the medium of our prejudices. It -divides and decompounds objects into a thousand curious parts, which may -be full of variety, beauty, and delicacy in themselves, though the -object to which they belong may be disagreeable in its general -appearance, or by association with other ideas. A painted marigold is -inferior to a painted rose only in form and colour: it loses nothing in -point of smell. Yellow hair is perfectly beautiful in a picture. To a -person lying with his face close to the ground in a summer’s day, the -blades of spear-grass will appear like tall forest trees, shooting up -into the sky; as an insect seen through a microscope is magnified into -an elephant. Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit -as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little -universe in itself.[50] Art may be said to draw aside the veil from -nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued -with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. -The pursuit of art is liable to be carried to a contrary excess, as -where it produces a rage for the _picturesque_. You cannot go a step -with a person of this class, but he stops you to point out some choice -bit of landscape, or fancied improvement, and teazes you almost to death -with the frequency and insignificance of his discoveries! - -It is a common opinion, (which may be worth noticing here), that the -study of physiognomy has a tendency to make people satirical, and the -knowledge of art to make them fastidious in their taste. Knowledge may, -indeed, afford a handle to ill-nature; but it takes away the principal -temptation to its exercise, by supplying the mind with better resources -against _ennui_. Idiots are always mischievous; and the most superficial -persons are the most disposed to find fault, because they understand the -fewest things. The English are more apt than any other nation to treat -foreigners with contempt, because they seldom see anything but their own -dress and manners; and it is only in petty provincial towns that you -meet with persons who pride themselves on being satirical. In every -country place in England there are one or two persons of this -description who keep the whole neighbourhood in terror. It is not to be -denied that the study of the _ideal_ in art, if separated from the study -of nature, may have the effect above stated, of producing -dissatisfaction and contempt for everything but itself, as all -affectation must; but to the genuine artist, truth, nature, beauty, are -almost different names for the same thing. - -Imitation interests, then, by exciting a more intense perception of -truth, and calling out the powers of observation and comparison: -wherever this effect takes place the interest follows of course, with or -without the imitation, whether the object is real or artificial. The -gardener delights in the streaks of a tulip, or ‘pansy freak’d with -jet’; the mineralogist in the varieties of certain strata, because he -understands them. Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. A work of art -has in this respect no advantage over a work of nature, except inasmuch -as it furnishes an additional stimulus to curiosity. Again, natural -objects please in proportion as they are uncommon, by fixing the -attention more steadily on their beauties or differences. The same -principle of the effect of novelty in exciting the attention, may -account, perhaps, for the extraordinary discoveries and lies told by -travellers, who, opening their eyes for the first time in foreign parts, -are startled at every object they meet. - -Why the excitement of intellectual activity pleases, is not here the -question; but that it does so, is a general and acknowledged law of the -human mind. We grow attached to the mathematics only from finding out -their truth; and their utility chiefly consists (at present) in the -contemplative pleasure they afford to the student. Lines, points, -angles, squares, and circles are not interesting in themselves; they -become so by the power of mind exerted in comprehending their properties -and relations. People dispute for ever about Hogarth. The question has -not in one respect been fairly stated. The merit of his pictures does -not so much depend on the nature of the subject, as on the knowledge -displayed of it, on the number of ideas they excite, on the fund of -thought and observation contained in them. They are to be looked on as -works of science; they gratify our love of truth; they fill up the void -of the mind: they are a series of plates of natural history, and also of -that most interesting part of natural history, the history of man. The -superiority of high art over the common or mechanical consists in -combining truth of imitation with beauty and grandeur of subject. The -historical painter is superior to the flower-painter, because he -combines or ought to combine human interests and passions with the same -power of imitating external nature; or, indeed, with greater, for the -greatest difficulty of imitation is the power of imitating expression. -The difficulty of copying increases with our knowledge of the object; -and that again with the interest we take in it. The same argument might -be applied to shew that the poet and painter of imagination are superior -to the mere philosopher or man of science, because they exercise the -powers of reason and intellect combined with nature and passion. They -treat of the highest categories of the human soul, pleasure and pain. - -From the foregoing train of reasoning, we may easily account for the too -great tendency of art to run into pedantry and affectation. There is ‘a -pleasure in art which none but artists feel.’ They see beauty where -others see nothing of the sort, in wrinkles, deformity, and old age. -They see it in Titian’s Schoolmaster as well as in Raphael’s Galatea; in -the dark shadows of Rembrandt as well as in the splendid colours of -Rubens; in an angel’s or in a butterfly’s wings. They see with different -eyes from the multitude. But true genius, though it has new sources of -pleasure opened to it, does not lose its sympathy with humanity. It -combines truth of imitation with effect, the parts with the whole, the -means with the end. The mechanic artist sees only that which nobody else -sees, and is conversant only with the technical language and -difficulties of his art. A painter, if shewn a picture, will generally -dwell upon the academic skill displayed in it, and the knowledge of the -received rules of composition. A musician, if asked to play a tune, will -select that which is the most difficult and the least intelligible. The -poet will be struck with the harmony of versification, or the -elaborateness of the arrangement in a composition. The conceits in -Shakspeare were his greatest delight; and improving upon this perverse -method of judging, the German writers, Goethe and Schiller, look upon -Werter and The Robbers as the worst of all their works, because they are -the most popular. Some artists among ourselves have carried the same -principle to a singular excess.[51] If professors themselves are liable -to this kind of pedantry, connoisseurs and dilettanti, who have less -sensibility and more affectation, are almost wholly swayed by it. They -see nothing in a picture but the execution. They are proud of their -knowledge in proportion as it is a secret. The worst judges of pictures -in the United Kingdom are, first, picture-dealers; next, perhaps, the -Directors of the British Institution; and after them, in all -probability, the Members of the Royal Academy. - - T. T. - - - NO. 21.] ON _GUSTO_ [MAY 26, 1816. - -Gusto in art is power or passion defining any object. It is not so -difficult to explain this term in what relates to expression (of which -it may be said to be the highest degree) as in what relates to things -without expression, to the natural appearances of objects, as mere -colour or form. In one sense, however, there is hardly any object -entirely devoid of expression, without some character of power belonging -to it, some precise association with pleasure or pain: and it is in -giving this truth of character from the truth of feeling, whether in the -highest or the lowest degree, but always in the highest degree of which -the subject is capable, that gusto consists. - -There is a gusto in the colouring of Titian. Not only do his heads seem -to think—his bodies seem to feel. This is what the Italians mean by the -_morbidezza_ of his flesh-colour. It seems sensitive and alive all over; -not merely to have the look and texture of flesh, but the feeling in -itself. For example, the limbs of his female figures have a luxurious -softness and delicacy, which appears conscious of the pleasure of the -beholder. As the objects themselves in nature would produce an -impression on the sense, distinct from every other object, and having -something divine in it, which the heart owns and the imagination -consecrates, the objects in the picture preserve the same impression, -absolute, unimpaired, stamped with all the truth of passion, the pride -of the eye, and the charm of beauty. Rubens makes his flesh-colour like -flowers; Albano’s is like ivory; Titian’s is like flesh, and like -nothing else. It is as different from that of other painters, as the -skin is from a piece of white or red drapery thrown over it. The blood -circulates here and there, the blue veins just appear, the rest is -distinguished throughout only by that sort of tingling sensation to the -eye, which the body feels within itself. This is gusto. Vandyke’s -flesh-colour, though it has great truth and purity, wants gusto. It has -not the internal character, the living principle in it. It is a smooth -surface, not a warm, moving mass. It is painted without passion, with -indifference. The hand only has been concerned. The impression slides -off from the eye, and does not, like the tones of Titian’s pencil, leave -a sting behind it in the mind of the spectator. The eye does not acquire -a taste or appetite for what it sees. In a word, gusto in painting is -where the impression made on one sense excites by affinity those of -another. - -Michael Angelo’s forms are full of gusto. They everywhere obtrude the -sense of power upon the eye. His limbs convey an idea of muscular -strength, of moral grandeur, and even of intellectual dignity: they are -firm, commanding, broad, and massy, capable of executing with ease the -determined purposes of the will. His faces have no other expression than -his figures, conscious power and capacity. They appear only to think -what they shall do, and to know that they can do it. This is what is -meant by saying that his style is hard and masculine. It is the reverse -of Correggio’s, which is effeminate. That is, the gusto of Michael -Angelo consists in expressing energy of will without proportionable -sensibility, Correggio’s in expressing exquisite sensibility without -energy of will. In Correggio’s faces as well as figures we see neither -bones nor muscles, but then what a soul is there, full of sweetness and -of grace—pure, playful, soft, angelical! There is sentiment enough in a -hand painted by Correggio to set up a school of history painters. -Whenever we look at the hands of Correggio’s women or of Raphael’s, we -always wish to touch them. - -Again, Titian’s landscapes have a prodigious gusto, both in the -colouring and forms. We shall never forget one that we saw many years -ago in the Orleans Gallery of Acteon hunting. It had a brown, mellow, -autumnal look. The sky was of the colour of stone. The winds seemed to -sing through the rustling branches of the trees, and already you might -hear the twanging of bows resound through the tangled mazes of the wood. -Mr. West, we understand, has this landscape. He will know if this -description of it is just. The landscape back-ground of the St. Peter -Martyr is another well known instance of the power of this great painter -to give a romantic interest and an appropriate character to the objects -of his pencil, where every circumstance adds to the effect of the -scene,—the bold trunks of the tall forest trees, the trailing ground -plants, with that tall convent spire rising in the distance, amidst the -blue sapphire mountains and the golden sky. - -Rubens has a great deal of gusto in his Fauns and Satyrs, and in all -that expresses motion, but in nothing else. Rembrandt has it in -everything; everything in his pictures has a tangible character. If he -puts a diamond in the ear of a burgomaster’s wife, it is of the first -water; and his furs and stuffs are proof against a Russian winter. -Raphael’s gusto was only in expression; he had no idea of the character -of anything but the human form. The dryness and poverty of his style in -other respects is a phenomenon in the art. His trees are like sprigs of -grass stuck in a book of botanical specimens. Was it that Raphael never -had time to go beyond the walls of Rome? That he was always in the -streets, at church, or in the bath? He was not one of the Society of -Arcadians.[52] - -Claude’s landscapes, perfect as they are, want gusto. This is not easy -to explain. They are perfect abstractions of the visible images of -things; they speak the visible language of nature truly. They resemble a -mirror or a microscope. To the eye only they are more perfect than any -other landscapes that ever were or will be painted; they give more of -nature, as cognisable by one sense alone; but they lay an equal stress -on all visible impressions. They do not interpret one sense by another; -they do not distinguish the character of different objects as we are -taught, and can only be taught, to distinguish them by their effect on -the different senses. That is, his eye wanted imagination: it did not -strongly sympathise with his other faculties. He saw the atmosphere, but -he did not feel it. He painted the trunk of a tree or a rock in the -foreground as smooth—with as complete an abstraction of the gross, -tangible impression, as any other part of the picture. His trees are -perfectly beautiful, but quite immovable; they have a look of -enchantment. In short, his landscapes are unequalled imitations of -nature, released from its subjection to the elements, as if all objects -were become a delightful fairy vision, and the eye had rarefied and -refined away the other senses. - -The gusto in the Greek statues is of a very singular kind. The sense of -perfect form nearly occupies the whole mind, and hardly suffers it to -dwell on any other feeling. It seems enough for them _to be_, without -acting or suffering. Their forms are ideal, spiritual. Their beauty is -power. By their beauty they are raised above the frailties of pain or -passion; by their beauty they are deified. - -The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shakspeare takes from his -gusto. The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He -never insists on anything as much as he might, except a quibble. Milton -has great gusto. He repeats his blows twice; grapples with and exhausts -his subject. His imagination has a double relish of its objects, an -inveterate attachment to the things he describes, and to the words -describing them. - - ——‘Or where Chineses drive - With sails and wind their _cany_ waggons _light_.’ - - . . . . . - - ‘Wild above rule or art, _enormous_ bliss.’ - -There is a gusto in Pope’s compliments, in Dryden’s satires, and Prior’s -tales; and among prose writers Boccacio and Rabelais had the most of it. -We will only mention one other work which appears to us to be full of -gusto, and that is the _Beggar’s Opera_. If it is not, we are altogether -mistaken in our notions on this delicate subject. - - W. H. - - - NO. 22.] ON PEDANTRY [MARCH 3, 1816. - -The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful -pursuits, in which our whole attention and faculties are engaged, is one -of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the -breach with joy; the miser deliberately starves himself to death; the -mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of -enthusiasm; and the lawyer sheds tears of admiration over Coke upon -Littleton. It is the same through human life. He who is not in some -measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man. - -The chief charm of reading the old novels is from the picture they give -of the egotism of the characters, the importance of each individual to -himself, and his fancied superiority over every one else. We like, for -instance, the pedantry of Parson Adams, who thought a schoolmaster the -greatest character in the world, and that he was the greatest -schoolmaster in it. We do not see any equivalent for the satisfaction -which this conviction must have afforded him in the most nicely -graduated scale of talents and accomplishments to which he was an utter -stranger. When the old-fashioned Scotch pedagogue turns Roderick Random -round and round, and surveys him from head to foot with such infinite -surprise and laughter, at the same time breaking out himself into -gestures and exclamations still more uncouth and ridiculous, who would -wish to have deprived him of this burst of extravagant self-complacency? -When our follies afford equal delight to ourselves and those about us, -what is there to be desired more? We cannot discover the vast advantage -of ‘seeing ourselves as others see us.’ It is better to have a contempt -for any one than for ourselves! - -One of the most constant butts of ridicule, both in the old comedies and -novels, is the professional jargon of the medical tribe. Yet it cannot -be denied that this jargon, however affected it may seem, is the natural -language of apothecaries and physicians, the mother-tongue of pharmacy! -It is that by which their knowledge first comes to them, that with which -they have the most obstinate associations, that in which they can -express themselves the most readily and with the best effect upon their -hearers; and though there may be some assumption of superiority in all -this, yet it is only by an effort of circumlocution that they could -condescend to explain themselves in ordinary language. Besides, there is -a delicacy at bottom; as it is the only language in which a nauseous -medicine can be decorously administered, or a limb taken off with the -proper degree of secrecy. If the most blundering coxcombs affect this -language most, what does it signify, while they retain the same -dignified notions of themselves and their art, and are equally happy in -their knowledge or their ignorance? The ignorant and pretending -physician is a capital character in Moliere: and, indeed, throughout his -whole plays the great source of the comic interest is in the fantastic -exaggeration of blind self-love, in letting loose the habitual -peculiarities of each individual from all restraint of conscious -observation or self-knowledge, in giving way to that specific levity of -impulse which mounts at once to the height of absurdity, in spite of the -obstacles that surround it, as a fluid in a barometer rises according to -the pressure of the external air! His characters are almost always -pedantic, and yet the most unconscious of all others. Take, for example, -those two worthy gentlemen, Monsieur Jourdain and Monsieur -Pourceaugnac.[53] - -Learning and pedantry were formerly synonymous; and it was well when -they were so. Can there be a higher satisfaction than for a man to -understand Greek, and to believe that there is nothing else worth -understanding? Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally -known. What an ease and a dignity in pretensions, founded on the -ignorance of others! What a pleasure in wondering, what a pride in being -wondered at! In the library of the family where we were brought up, -stood the _Fratres Poloni_; and we can never forget or describe the -feeling with which not only their appearance, but the names of the -authors on the outside inspired us. Pripscovius, we remember, was one of -the easiest to pronounce. The gravity of the contents seemed in -proportion to the weight of the volumes; the importance of the subjects -increased with our ignorance of them. The trivialness of the remarks, if -ever we looked into them,—the repetitions, the monotony, only gave a -greater solemnity to the whole, as the slowness and minuteness of the -evidence adds to the impressiveness of a judicial proceeding. We knew -that the authors had devoted their whole lives to the production of -these works, carefully abstaining from the introduction of any thing -amusing or lively or interesting. In ten folio volumes there was not one -sally of wit, one striking reflection. What, then, must have been their -sense of the importance of the subject, the profound stores of knowledge -which they had to communicate! ‘From all this world’s encumbrance they -did themselves assoil.’ Such was the notion we then had of this learned -lumber; yet we would rather have this feeling again for one half-hour -than be possessed of all the acuteness of Bayle or the wit of Voltaire! - -It may be considered as a sign of the decay of piety and learning in -modern times, that our divines no longer introduce texts of the original -Scriptures into their sermons. The very sound of the original Greek or -Hebrew would impress the hearer with a more lively faith in the sacred -writers than any translation, however literal or correct. It may be even -doubted whether the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue -was any advantage to the people. The mystery in which particular points -of faith were left involved, gave an awe and sacredness to religious -opinions: the general purport of the truths and promises of revelation -was made known by other means; and nothing beyond this general and -implicit conviction can be obtained, where all is undefined and -infinite. - -Again, it may be questioned whether, in matters of mere human reasoning, -much has been gained by the disuse of the learned languages. Sir Isaac -Newton wrote in Latin; and it is perhaps one of Bacon’s fopperies that -he translated his works into English. If certain follies have been -exposed by being stripped of their formal disguise, others have had a -greater chance of succeeding, by being presented in a more pleasing and -popular shape. This has been remarkably the case in France, (the least -pedantic country in the world), where the women mingle with everything, -even with metaphysics, and where all philosophy is reduced to a set of -phrases for the toilette. When books are written in the prevailing -language of the country, every one becomes a critic who can read. An -author is no longer tried by his peers. A species of universal suffrage -is introduced in letters, which is only applicable to politics. The good -old Latin style of our forefathers, if it concealed the dullness of the -writer, at least was a barrier against the impertinence, flippancy, and -ignorance of the reader. However, the immediate transition from the -pedantic to the popular style in literature was a change that must have -been very delightful at the time. Our illustrious predecessors, the -_Tatler_ and _Spectator_, were very happily off in this respect. They -wore the public favour in its newest gloss, before it had become -tarnished and common—before familiarity had bred contempt. It was the -honey-moon of authorship. Their Essays were among the first instances in -this country of learning sacrificing to the graces, and of a mutual -understanding and good-humoured equality between the writer and the -reader. This new style of composition, to use the phraseology of Mr. -Burke, ‘mitigated authors into companions, and compelled wisdom to -submit to the soft collar of social esteem.’ The original papers of the -_Tatler_, printed on a half sheet of common foolscap, were regularly -served up at breakfast-time with the silver tea-kettle and thin slices -of bread and butter; and what the ingenious Mr. Bickerstaff wrote -overnight in his easy chair, he might flatter himself would be read the -next morning with elegant applause by the fair, the witty, the learned, -and the great, in all parts of this kingdom, in which civilisation had -made any considerable advances. The perfection of letters is when the -highest ambition of the writer is to please his readers, and the -greatest pride of the reader is to understand his author. The -satisfaction on both sides ceases when the town becomes a club of -authors, when each man stands with his manuscript in his hand waiting -for his turn of applause, and when the claims on our admiration are so -many, that, like those of common beggars, to prevent imposition they can -only be answered with general neglect. Our self-love would be quite -bankrupt, if critics by profession did not come forward as beadles to -keep off the crowd, and to relieve us from the importunity of these -innumerable candidates for fame, by pointing out their faults and -passing over their beauties. In the more auspicious period just alluded -to an author was regarded by the better sort as a man of genius, and by -the vulgar, as a kind of prodigy; insomuch that the Spectator was -obliged to shorten his residence at his friend Sir Roger de Coverley’s, -from his being taken for a conjuror. Every state of society has its -advantages and disadvantages. An author is at present in no danger of -being taken for a conjuror! - - - NO. 23.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [MARCH 10, 1816. - -Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception -may succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted. A constant -examination of the value of our opinions and enjoyments, compared with -those of others, may lessen our prejudices, but will leave nothing for -our affections to rest upon. A multiplicity of objects unsettles the -mind, and destroys not only all enthusiasm, but all sincerity of -attachment, all constancy of pursuit; as persons accustomed to an -itinerant mode of life never feel themselves at home in any place. It is -by means of habit that our intellectual employments mix like our food -with the circulation of the blood, and go on like any other part of the -animal functions. To take away the force of habit and prejudice -entirely, is to strike at the root of our personal existence. The -book-worm, buried in the depth of his researches, may well say to the -obtrusive shifting realities of the world, ‘Leave me to my repose!’ We -have seen an instance of a poetical enthusiast, who would have passed -his life very comfortably in the contemplation of _his own idea_, if he -had not been disturbed in his reverie by the Reviewers; and for our own -parts, we think we could pass our lives very learnedly and classically -in one of the quadrangles at Oxford, without any idea at all, vegetating -merely on the air of the place. Chaucer has drawn a beautiful picture of -a true scholar in his Clerk of Oxenford: - - ‘A Clerk ther was of Oxenforde also, - That unto logik, hadde longe ygo. - As lene was his hors as is a rake, - And he was not right fat, I undertake; - But loked holwe, and thereto soberly. - Ful thredbare was his overest courtepy, - For he hadde geten him yit no benefice, - Ne was nought worldly to have an office. - For him was lever have at his beddes hed - A twenty bokes, clothed in blak or red, - Of Aristotle and his philosophie, - Then robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie. - But all be that he was a philosophre, - Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre, - But al that he might of his frendes hente, - On bokes and on lerning he it spente, - And besily gan for the soules praie - Of hem, that gave him wherwith to scolaie. - Of studie toke he moste care and hede. - Not a word spake he more than was nede; - And that was said in forme and reverence, - And short, and quike, and full of high sentence. - Sowning in moral vertue was his speche, - And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.’ - -If letters have profited little by throwing down the barrier between -learned prejudice and ignorant presumption, the arts have profited still -less by the universal diffusion of accomplishment and pretension. An -artist is no longer looked upon as any thing, who is not at the same -time ‘chemist, statesman, fiddler, and buffoon.’ It is expected of him -that he should be well-dressed, and he is poor; that he should move -gracefully, and he has never learned to dance; that he should converse -on all subjects, and he understands but one; that he should be read in -different languages, and he only knows his own. Yet there is one -language, the language of Nature, in which it is enough for him to be -able to read, to find everlasting employment and solace to his thoughts— - - ‘Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, - Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.’ - -He will find no end of his labours or of his triumphs there; yet still -feel all his strength not more than equal to the task he has begun—his -whole life too short for art. Rubens complained, that just as he was -beginning to understand his profession, he was forced to quit it. It was -a saying of Michael Angelo, that ‘painting was jealous, and required the -whole man to herself.’ Is it to be supposed that Rembrandt did not find -sufficient resources against the spleen in the little cell, where -mystery and silence hung upon his pencil, or the noon-tide ray -penetrated the solemn gloom around him, without the aid of modern -newspapers, novels, and reviews? Was he not more wisely employed, while -devoted solely to his art—married to that immortal bride! We do not -imagine Sir Joshua Reynolds was much happier for having written his -lectures, nor for the learned society he kept, friendship apart; and -learned society is not necessary to friendship. He was evidently, as far -as conversation was concerned, little at his ease in it; and he was -always glad, as he himself said, after he had been entertained at the -houses of the great, to get back to his painting-room again. Any one -settled pursuit, together with the ordinary alternations of leisure, -exercise, and amusement, and the natural feelings and relations of -society, is quite enough to take up the whole of our thoughts, time, and -affections; and any thing beyond this will, generally speaking, only -tend to dissipate and distract the mind. There is no end of -accomplishments, of the prospect of new acquisitions of taste or skill, -or of the uneasiness arising from the want of them, if we once indulge -in this idle habit of vanity and affectation. The mind is never -satisfied with what it is, but is always looking out for fanciful -perfections, which it can neither attain nor practise. Our failure in -any one object is fatal to our enjoyment of all the rest; and the -chances of disappointment multiply with the number of our pursuits. In -catching at the shadow, we lose the substance. No man can thoroughly -master more than one art or science. The world has never seen a perfect -painter. What would it have availed for Raphael to have aimed at -Titian’s colouring, or for Titian to have imitated Raphael’s drawing, -but to have diverted each from the true bent of his natural genius, and -to have made each sensible of his own deficiencies, without any -probability of supplying them? Pedantry in art, in learning, in every -thing, is the setting an extraordinary value on that which we can do, -and that which we understand best, and which it is our business to do -and understand. Where is the harm of this? To possess or even understand -all kinds of excellence equally, is impossible; and to pretend to admire -that to which we are indifferent, as much as that which is of the -greatest use, and which gives the greatest pleasure to us, is not -liberality, but affectation. Is an artist, for instance, to be required -to feel the same admiration for the works of Handel as for those of -Raphael? If he is sincere, he cannot: and a man, to be free from -pedantry, must be either a coxcomb or a hypocrite. Vestris was so far in -the right, in saying that Voltaire and he were the two greatest men in -Europe. Voltaire was so in the public opinion, and he was so in his own. -Authors and literary people have been unjustly accused for arrogating an -exclusive preference to letters over other arts. They are justified in -doing this, because words are the most natural and universal language, -and because they have the sympathy of the world with them. Poets, for -the same reason, have a right to be the vainest of authors. The -prejudice attached to established reputation is, in like manner, -perfectly well founded, because that which has longest excited our -admiration and the admiration of mankind, is most entitled to -admiration, on the score of habit, sympathy, and deference to public -opinion. There is a sentiment attached to classical reputation, which -cannot belong to new works of genius, till they become old in their -turn. - -There appears to be a natural division of labour in the ornamental as -well as the mechanical arts of human life. We do not see why a nobleman -should wish to shine as a poet, any more than to be dubbed a knight, or -to be created Lord Mayor of London. If he succeeds, he gains nothing; -and then if he is damned, what a ridiculous figure he makes! The great, -instead of rivalling them, should keep authors, as they formerly kept -fools,—a practice in itself highly laudable, and the disuse of which -might be referred to as the first symptom of the degeneracy of modern -times, and dissolution of the principles of social order! But of all the -instances of a profession now unjustly obsolete, commend us to the -alchemist. We see him sitting fortified in his prejudices, with his -furnace, his diagrams, and his alembics; smiling at disappointments as -proofs of the sublimity of his art, and the earnest of his future -success: wondering at his own knowledge and the incredulity of others; -fed with hope to the last gasp, and having all the pleasures without the -pain of madness. What is there in the discoveries of modern chemistry -equal to the very names of the ELIXIR VITÆ and the AURUM POTABILE! - -In _Froissard’s Chronicles_ there is an account of a reverend Monk who -had been a robber in the early part of his life, and who, when he grew -old, used feelingly to lament that he had ever changed his profession. -He said, ‘It was a goodly sight to sally out from his castle, and to see -a troop of jolly friars coming riding that way, with their mules well -laden with viands and rich stores, to advance towards them, to attack -and overthrow them, returning to the castle with a noble booty.’ He -preferred this mode of life to counting his beads and chaunting his -vespers, and repented that he had ever been prevailed on to relinquish -so laudable a calling. In this confession of remorse, we may be sure -that there was no hypocrisy. - -The difference in the character of the gentlemen of the present age and -those of the old school, has been often insisted on. The character of a -gentleman is a _relative term_, which can hardly subsist where there is -no marked distinction of persons. The diffusion of knowledge, of -artificial and intellectual equality, tends to level this distinction, -and to confound that nice perception and high sense of honour, which -arises from conspicuousness of situation, and a perpetual attention to -personal propriety and the claims of personal respect. The age of -chivalry is gone with the improvements in the art of war, which -superseded the exercise of personal courage; and the character of a -gentleman must disappear with those general refinements in manners, -which render the advantages of rank and situation accessible almost to -every one. The bag-wig and sword naturally followed the fate of the -helmet and the spear, when these outward insignia no longer implied -acknowledged superiority, and were a distinction without a difference. - -The spirit of chivalrous and romantic love proceeded on the same -exclusive principle. It was an enthusiastic adoration, an idolatrous -worship paid to sex and beauty. This, even in its blindest excess, was -better than the cold indifference and prostituted gallantry of this -philosophic age. The extreme tendency of civilisation is to dissipate -all intellectual energy, and dissolve all moral principle. We are -sometimes inclined to regret the innovations on the Catholic religion. -It was a noble charter for ignorance, dullness, and prejudice of all -kinds, (perhaps, after all, ‘the sovereign’st things on earth’), and put -an effectual stop to the vanity and restlessness of opinion. ‘It wrapped -the human understanding all round like a blanket.’ Since the -Reformation, altars, unsprinkled by holy oil, are no longer sacred; and -thrones, unsupported by the divine right, have become uneasy and -insecure. - - W. H. - - - NO. 24.] ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU [APRIL 14, 1816. - -Madame de Stael, in her Letters on the Writings and Character of -Rousseau, gives it as her opinion, ‘that the imagination was the first -faculty of his mind, and that this faculty even absorbed all the -others.’[54] And she farther adds, ‘Rousseau had great strength of -reason on abstract questions, or with respect to objects, which have no -reality but in the mind.’[55] Both these opinions are radically wrong. -Neither imagination nor reason can properly be said to have been the -original predominant faculties of his mind. The strength both of -imagination and reason, which he possessed, was borrowed from the excess -of another faculty; and the weakness and poverty of reason and -imagination, which are to be found in his works, may be traced to the -same source, namely, that these faculties in him were artificial, -secondary, and dependant, operating by a power not theirs, but lent to -them. The only quality which he possessed in an eminent degree, which -alone raised him above ordinary men, and which gave to his writings and -opinions an influence greater, perhaps, than has been exerted by any -individual in modern times, was extreme sensibility, or an acute and -even morbid feeling of all that related to his own impressions, to the -objects and events of his life. He had the most intense consciousness of -his own existence. No object that had once made an impression on him was -ever after effaced. Every feeling in his mind became a passion. His -craving after excitement was an appetite and a disease. His interest in -his own thoughts and feelings was always wound up to the highest pitch; -and hence the enthusiasm which he excited in others. He owed the power -which he exercised over the opinions of all Europe, by which he created -numberless disciples, and overturned established systems, to the tyranny -which his feelings, in the first instance, exercised over himself. The -dazzling blaze of his reputation was kindled by the same fire that fed -upon his vitals.[56] His ideas differed from those of other men only in -their force and intensity. His genius was the effect of his temperament. -He created nothing, he demonstrated nothing, by a pure effort of the -understanding. His fictitious characters are modifications of his own -being, reflections and shadows of himself. His speculations are the -obvious exaggerations of a mind, giving a loose to its habitual -impulses, and moulding all nature to its own purposes. Hence his -enthusiasm and his eloquence, bearing down all opposition. Hence the -warmth and the luxuriance, as well as the sameness of his descriptions. -Hence the frequent verboseness of his style; for passion lends force and -reality to language, and makes words supply the place of imagination. -Hence the tenaciousness of his logic, the acuteness of his observations, -the refinement and the inconsistency of his reasoning. Hence his keen -penetration, and his strange want of comprehension of mind: for the same -intense feeling which enabled him to discern the first principles of -things, and seize some one view of a subject in all its ramifications, -prevented him from admitting the operation of other causes which -interfered with his favourite purpose, and involved him in endless -wilful contradictions. Hence his excessive egotism, which filled all -objects with himself, and would have occupied the universe with his -smallest interest. Hence his jealousy and suspicion of others; for no -attention, no respect or sympathy, could come up to the extravagant -claims of his self-love. Hence his dissatisfaction with himself and with -all around him; for nothing could satisfy his ardent longings after -good, his restless appetite of being. Hence his feelings, overstrained -and exhausted, recoiled upon themselves, and produced his love of -silence and repose, his feverish aspirations after the quiet and -solitude of nature. Hence in part also his quarrel with the artificial -institutions and distinctions of society, which opposed so many barriers -to the unrestrained indulgence of his will, and allured his imagination -to scenes of pastoral simplicity or of savage life, where the passions -were either not excited or left to follow their own impulse,—where the -petty vexations and irritating disappointments of common life had no -place,—and where the tormenting pursuits of arts and sciences were lost -in pure animal enjoyment, or indolent repose. Thus he describes the -first savage wandering for ever under the shade of magnificent forests, -or by the side of mighty rivers, smit with the unquenchable love of -nature! - -The best of all his works is the _Confessions_, though it is that which -has been least read, because it contains the fewest set paradoxes or -general opinions. It relates entirely to himself; and no one was ever so -much at home on this subject as he was. From the strong hold which they -had taken of his mind, he makes us enter into his feelings as if they -had been our own, and we seem to remember every incident and -circumstance of his life as if it had happened to ourselves. We are -never tired of this work, for it everywhere presents us with pictures -which we can fancy to be counterparts of our own existence. The passages -of this sort are innumerable. There is the interesting account of his -childhood, the constraints and thoughtless liberty of which are so well -described; of his sitting up all night reading romances with his father, -till they were forced to desist by hearing the swallows twittering in -their nests; his crossing the Alps, described with all the feelings -belonging to it, his pleasure in setting out, his satisfaction in coming -to his journey’s end, the delight of ‘coming and going he knew not -where’; his arriving at Turin; the figure of Madame Basile, drawn with -such inimitable precision and elegance; the delightful adventure of the -Chateau de Toune, where he passed the day with Mademoiselle G**** and -Mademoiselle Galley; the story of his Zulietta, the proud, the charming -Zulietta, whose last words, ‘_Va Zanetto, e studia la Matematica_,’ were -never to be forgotten; his sleeping near Lyons in a niche of the wall, -after a fine summer’s day, with a nightingale perched above his head; -his first meeting with Madame Warens, the pomp of sound with which he -has celebrated her name, beginning ‘_Louise Eleonore de Warens étoit une -demoiselle de la Tour de Pil, noble et ancienne famille de Vevai, ville -du pays de Vaud_’ (sounds which we still tremble to repeat); his -description of her person, her angelic smile, her mouth of the size of -his own; his walking out one day while the bells were chiming to -vespers, and anticipating in a sort of waking dream the life he -afterwards led with her, in which months and years, and life itself -passed away in undisturbed felicity; the sudden disappointment of his -hopes; his transport thirty years after at seeing the same flower which -they had brought home together from one of their rambles near Chambery; -his thoughts in that long interval of time; his suppers with Grimm and -Diderot after he came to Paris; the first idea of his prize dissertation -on the savage state; his account of writing the _New Eloise_, and his -attachment to Madame d’Houdetot; his literary projects, his fame, his -misfortunes, his unhappy temper; his last solitary retirement in the -lake and island of Bienne, with his dog and his boat; his reveries and -delicious musings there; all these crowd into our minds with -recollections which we do not chuse to express. There are no passages in -the _New Eloise_ of equal force and beauty with the best descriptions in -the _Confessions_, if we except the excursion on the water, Julia’s last -letter to St. Preux, and his letter to her, recalling the days of their -first loves. We spent two whole years in reading these two works; and -(gentle reader, it was when we were young) in shedding tears over them - - ——‘As fast as the Arabian trees - Their medicinal gums.’ - -They were the happiest years of our life. We may well say of them, sweet -is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollection! -There are, indeed, impressions which neither time nor circumstances can -efface.[57] - -Rousseau, in all his writings, never once lost sight of himself. He was -the same individual from first to last. The spring that moved his -passions never went down, the pulse that agitated his heart never ceased -to beat. It was this strong feeling of interest, accumulating in his -mind, which overpowers and absorbs the feelings of his readers. He owed -all his power to sentiment. The writer who most nearly resembles him in -our own times is the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_. We see no other -difference between them, than that the one wrote in prose and the other -in poetry; and that prose is perhaps better adapted to express those -local and personal feelings, which are inveterate habits in the mind, -than poetry, which embodies its imaginary creations. We conceive that -Rousseau’s exclamation, ‘_Ah, voila de la pervenche_,’ comes more home -to the mind than Mr. Wordsworth’s discovery of the linnet’s nest ‘with -five blue eggs,’ or than his address to the cuckoo, beautiful as we -think it is; and we will confidently match the Citizen of Geneva’s -adventures on the Lake of Bienne against the Cumberland Poet’s floating -dreams on the Lake of Grasmere. Both create an interest out of nothing, -or rather out of their own feelings; both weave numberless recollections -into one sentiment; both wind their own being round whatever object -occurs to them. But Rousseau, as a prose-writer, gives only the habitual -and personal impression. Mr. Wordsworth, as a poet, is forced to lend -the colours of imagination to impressions which owe all their force to -their identity with themselves, and tries to paint what is only to be -felt. Rousseau, in a word, interests you in certain objects by -interesting you in himself: Mr. Wordsworth would persuade you that the -most insignificant objects are interesting in themselves, because he is -interested in them. If he had met with Rousseau’s favourite periwinkle, -he would have _translated_ it into the most beautiful of flowers. This -is not imagination, but want of sense. If his jealousy of the sympathy -of others makes him avoid what is beautiful and grand in nature, why -does he undertake elaborately to describe other objects? _His_ nature is -a mere Dulcinea del Toboso, and he would make a Vashti of her. Rubens -appears to have been as extravagantly attached to his three wives, as -Raphael was to his Fornarina; but their faces were not so classical. The -three greatest egotists that we know of, that is, the three writers who -felt their own being most powerfully and exclusively, are Rousseau, -Wordsworth, and Benvenuto Cellini. As Swift somewhere says, we defy the -world to furnish out a fourth. - - W. H. - - - NO. 25.] ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME [APRIL 21, 1816. - -There is a half serious, half ironical argument in Melmoth’s -_Fitz-Osborn’s Letters_, to shew the futility of posthumous fame, which -runs thus: ‘The object of any one who is inspired with this passion is -to be remembered by posterity with admiration and delight, as having -been possessed of certain powers and excellences which distinguished him -above his contemporaries. But posterity, it is said, can know nothing of -the individual but from the memory of these qualities which he has left -behind him. All that we know of Julius Cæsar, for instance, is that he -was the person who performed certain actions, and wrote a book called -his _Commentaries_. When, therefore, we extol Julius Cæsar for his -actions or his writings, what do we say but that the person who -performed certain things did perform them; that the author of such a -work was the person who wrote it; or, in short, that Julius Cæsar was -Julius Cæsar? Now this is a mere truism, and the desire to be the -subject of such an identical proposition must, therefore, be an evident -absurdity.’ The sophism is a tolerably ingenious one, but it is a -sophism, nevertheless. It would go equally to prove the nullity, not -only of posthumous fame, but of living reputation; for the good or the -bad opinion which my next-door neighbour may entertain of me is nothing -more than his conviction that such and such a person having certain good -or bad qualities is possessed of them; nor is the figure, which a -Lord-Mayor elect, a prating demagogue, or popular preacher, makes in the -eyes of the admiring multitude—_himself_, but an image of him reflected -in the minds of others, in connection with certain feelings of respect -and wonder. In fact, whether the admiration we seek is to last for a day -or for eternity, whether we are to have it while living or after we are -dead, whether it is to be expressed by our contemporaries or by future -generations, the principle of it is the same—_sympathy with the feelings -of others_, and the necessary tendency which the idea or consciousness -of the approbation of others has to strengthen the suggestions of our -self-love.[58] We are all inclined to think well of ourselves, of our -sense and capacity in whatever we undertake; but from this very desire -to think well of ourselves, we are (as _Mrs. Peachum_ says) ‘_bitter_ -bad judges’ of our own pretensions; and when our vanity flatters us -most, we ought in general to suspect it most. We are, therefore, glad to -get the good opinion of a friend, but that may be partial; the good word -of a stranger is likely to be more sincere, but he may be a blockhead; -the multitude will agree with us, if we agree with them; accident, the -caprice of fashion, the prejudice of the moment, may give a fleeting -reputation; our only certain appeal, therefore, is to posterity; the -voice of fame is alone the voice of truth. In proportion, however, as -this award is final and secure, it is remote and uncertain. Voltaire -said to some one, who had addressed an Epistle to Posterity, ‘I am -afraid, my friend, this letter will never be delivered according to its -direction.’ It can exist only in imagination; and we can only presume -upon our claim to it, as we prefer the hope of lasting fame to every -thing else. The love of fame is almost another name for the love of -excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, -sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time. Vanity, and the love -of fame, are quite distinct from each other; for the one is voracious of -the most obvious and doubtful applause, whereas the other rejects or -overlooks every kind of applause but that which is purified from every -mixture of flattery, and identified with truth and nature itself. There -is, therefore, something disinterested in this passion, inasmuch as it -is abstracted and ideal, and only appeals to opinion as a standard of -truth; it is this which ‘makes ambition virtue.’ Milton had as fine an -idea as any one of true fame; and Dr. Johnson has very beautifully -described his patient and confident anticipations of the success of his -great poem in the account of _Paradise Lost_. He has, indeed, done the -same thing himself in _Lycidas_: - - ‘Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise - (That last infirmity of noble mind) - To scorn delights, and live laborious days; - But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, - And think to burst out into sudden blaze, - Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears, - And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, - Phœbus replied, and touch’d my trembling ears.’ - -None but those who have sterling pretensions can afford to refer them to -time; as persons who live upon their means cannot well go into Chancery. -No feeling can be more at variance with the true love of fame than that -impatience which we have sometimes witnessed to ‘pluck its fruits, -unripe and crude,’ before the time, to make a little echo of popularity -mimic the voice of fame, and to convert a prize-medal or a -newspaper-puff into a passport to immortality. - -When we hear any one complaining that he has not the same fame as some -poet or painter who lived two hundred years ago, he seems to us to -complain that he has not been dead these two hundred years. When his -fame has undergone the same ordeal, that is, has lasted as long, it will -be as good, if he really deserves it. We think it equally absurd, when -we sometimes find people objecting, that such an acquaintance of theirs, -who has not an idea in his head, should be so much better off in the -world than they are. But it is for this very reason; they have preferred -the indulgence of their ideas to the pursuit of realities. It is but -fair that he who has no ideas should have something in their stead. If -he who has devoted his time to the study of beauty, to the pursuit of -truth, whose object has been to govern opinion, to form the taste of -others, to instruct or to amuse the public, succeeds in this respect, he -has no more right to complain that he has not a title or a fortune, than -he who has not purchased a ticket, that is, who has taken no means to -the end, has a right to complain that he has not a prize in the lottery. - -In proportion as men can command the immediate and vulgar applause of -others, they become indifferent to that which is remote and difficult of -attainment. We take pains only when we are compelled to do it. Little -men are remarked to have courage; little women to have wit; and it is -seldom that a man of genius is a coxcomb in his dress. Rich men are -contented not to be thought wise; and the Great often think themselves -well off, if they can escape being the jest of their acquaintance. -Authors were actuated by the desire of the applause of posterity, only -so long as they were debarred of that of their contemporaries, just as -we see the map of the gold-mines of Peru hanging in the room of -Hogarth’s _Distressed Poet_. In the midst of the ignorance and -prejudices with which they were surrounded, they had a sort of _forlorn -hope_ in the prospect of immortality. The spirit of universal criticism -has superseded the anticipation of posthumous fame, and instead of -waiting for the award of distant ages, the poet or prose-writer receives -his final doom from the next number of the _Edinburgh_ or _Quarterly -Review_. According as the nearness of the applause increases, our -impatience increases with it. A writer in a weekly journal engages with -reluctance in a monthly publication: and again, a contributor to a daily -paper sets about his task with greater spirit than either of them. It is -like prompt payment. The effort and the applause go together. We, -indeed, have known a man of genius and eloquence, to whom, from a habit -of excessive talking, the certainty of seeing what he wrote in print the -next day was too remote a stimulus for his imagination, and who -constantly laid aside his pen in the middle of an article, if a friend -dropped in, to finish the subject more effectually aloud, so that the -approbation of his hearer, and the sound of his own voice might be -co-instantaneous. Members of Parliament seldom turn authors, except to -print their speeches when they have not been distinctly heard or -understood; and great orators are generally very indifferent writers, -from want of sufficient inducement to exert themselves, when the -immediate effect on others is not perceived, and the irritation of -applause or opposition ceases. - -There have been in the last century two singular examples of literary -reputation, the one of an author without a name, and the other of a name -without an author. We mean the author of _Junius’s Letters_, and the -translator of the mottos to the _Rambler_, whose name was Elphinstone. -The _Rambler_ was published in the year 1750, and the name of -Elphinstone prefixed to each paper is familiar to every literary reader, -since that time, though we know nothing more of him. We saw this -gentleman, since the commencement of the present century, looking over a -clipped hedge in the country, with a broad-flapped hat, a venerable -countenance, and his dress cut out with the same formality as his -ever-greens. His name had not only survived half a century in -conjunction with that of Johnson, but he had survived with it, enjoying -all the dignity of a classical reputation, and the ease of a literary -sinecure, on the strength of his mottos. The author of _Junius’s -Letters_ is, on the contrary, as remarkable an instance of a writer who -has arrived at all the public honours of literature, without being known -by name to a single individual, and who may be said to have realised all -the pleasure of posthumous fame, while living, without the smallest -gratification of personal vanity. An anonymous writer may feel an acute -interest in what is said of his productions, and a secret satisfaction -in their success, because it is not the effect of personal -considerations, as the overhearing any one speak well of us is more -agreeable than a direct compliment. But this very satisfaction will -tempt him to communicate his secret. This temptation, however, does not -extend beyond the circle of his acquaintance. With respect to the -public, who know an author only by his writings, it is of little -consequence whether he has a real or a fictitious name, or a signature, -so that they have some clue by which to associate the works with the -author. In the case of _Junius_, therefore, where other personal -considerations of interest or connections might immediately counteract -and set aside this temptation, the triumph over the mere vanity of -authorship might not have cost him so dear as we are at first inclined -to imagine. Suppose it to have been the old Marquis of ——? It is quite -out of the question that he should keep his places and not keep his -secret. If ever the King should die, we think it not impossible that the -secret may out. Certainly the _accouchement_ of any princess in Europe -would not excite an equal interest. ‘And you, then, Sir, are the author -of _Junius_!’ What a recognition for the public and the author! That -between Yorick and the Frenchman was a trifle to it. - -We have said that we think the desire to be known by name as an author -chiefly has a reference to those to whom we are known personally, and is -strongest with regard to those who know most of our persons and least of -our capacities. We wish to _subpœna_ the public to our characters. Those -who, by great services or great meannesses, have attained titles, always -take them from the place with which they have the earliest associations, -and thus strive to throw a veil of importance over the insignificance of -their original pretensions, or the injustice of fortune. When Lord -Nelson was passing over the quay at Yarmouth, to take possession of the -ship to which he had been appointed, the people exclaimed, ‘Why make -that little fellow a captain?’ He thought of this when he fought the -battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. The same sense of personal -insignificance which made him great in action made him a fool in love. -If Bonaparte had been six inches higher, he never would have gone on -that disastrous Russian expedition, nor ‘with that addition’ would he -ever have been Emperor and King. For our own parts, one object which we -have in writing these Essays, is to send them in a volume to a person -who took some notice of us when children, and who augured, perhaps, -better of us than we deserved. In fact, the opinion of those who know us -most, who are a kind of second self in our recollections, is a sort of -second conscience; and the approbation of one or two friends is all the -immortality _we_ pretend to. - - A. - - - NO. 26.] CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL [MAY 19, 1816. - -In a late number of a respectable publication, there is the following -description of the French character:— - -‘Extremes meet. This is the only way of accounting for that enigma, the -French character. It has often been remarked, that this ingenious nation -exhibits more striking contradictions than any other that ever existed. -They are the gayest of the gay, and the gravest of the grave. Their very -faces pass at once from an expression of the most lively animation, when -they are in conversation or in action, to a melancholy blank. They are -the lightest and most volatile, and at the same time the most plodding, -mechanical, and laborious people in Europe. They are one moment the -slaves of the most contemptible prejudices, and the next launch out into -all the extravagance of the most abstract speculations. In matters of -taste they are as inexorable as they are lax in questions of morality; -they judge of the one by rules, of the other by their inclinations. It -seems at times as if nothing could shock them, and yet they are offended -at the merest trifles. The smallest things make the greatest impression -on them. From the facility with which they can accommodate themselves to -circumstances, they have no fixed principles or real character. They are -always that which gives them least pain, or costs them least trouble. -They easily disentangle their thoughts from whatever causes the -slightest uneasiness, and direct their sensibility to flow in any -channels they think proper. Their whole existence is more theatrical -than real—their sentiments put on or off like the dress of an actor. -Words are with them equivalent to things. They say what is agreeable, -and believe what they say. Virtue and vice, good and evil, liberty and -slavery, are matters almost of indifference. Their natural -self-complacency stands them in stead of all other advantages.’ - -The foregoing account is pretty near the truth; we have nothing to say -against it; but we shall here endeavour to do a like piece of justice to -our countrymen, who are too apt to mistake the vices of others for so -many virtues in themselves. - -If a Frenchman is pleased with every thing, John Bull is pleased with -nothing, and that is a fault. He is, to be sure, fond of having his own -way, till you let him have it. He is a very headstrong animal, who -mistakes the spirit of contradiction for the love of independence, and -proves himself to be in the right by the obstinacy with which he -stickles for the wrong. You cannot put him so much out of his way as by -agreeing with him. He is never in such good-humour as with what gives -him the spleen, and is most satisfied when he is sulky. If you find -fault with him, he is in a rage; and if you praise him, suspects you -have a design upon him. He recommends himself to another by affronting -him, and if that will not do, knocks him down to convince him of his -sincerity. He gives himself such airs as no mortal ever did, and wonders -at the rest of the world for not thinking him the most amiable person -breathing. John means well too, but he has an odd way of showing it, by -a total disregard of other people’s feelings and opinions. He is -sincere, for he tells you at the first word he does not like you; and -never deceives, for he never offers to serve you. A civil answer is too -much to expect from him. A word costs him more than a blow. He is silent -because he has nothing to say, and he looks stupid because he is so. He -has the strangest notions of beauty. The expression he values most in -the human countenance is an appearance of roast beef and plum-pudding; -and if he has a red face and round belly, thinks himself a great man. He -is a little purse-proud, and has a better opinion of himself for having -made a full meal. But his greatest delight is in a bugbear. This he must -have, be the consequence what it may. Whoever will give him that, may -lead him by the nose, and pick his pocket at the same time. An idiot in -a country town, a Presbyterian parson, a dog with a cannister tied to -his tail, a bull-bait, or a fox-hunt, are irresistible attractions to -him. The Pope was formerly his great aversion, and latterly, a cap of -liberty is a thing he cannot abide. He discarded the Pope, and defied -the Inquisition, called the French a nation of slaves and beggars, and -abused their _Grand Monarque_ for a tyrant, cut off one king’s head, and -exiled another, set up a Dutch Stadtholder, and elected a Hanoverian -Elector to be king over him, to shew he would have his own way, and to -teach the rest of the world what they should do: but since other people -took to imitating his example, John has taken it into his head to hinder -them, will have a monopoly of rebellion and regicide to himself, has -become sworn brother to the Pope, and stands by the Inquisition, -restores his old enemies, the Bourbons, and reads _a great moral lesson_ -to their subjects, persuades himself that the Dutch Stadtholder and the -Hanoverian Elector came to reign over him by divine right, and does all -he can to prove himself a beast to make other people slaves. The truth -is, John was always a surly, meddlesome, obstinate fellow, and of late -years his _head_ has not been quite right! In short, John is a great -blockhead and a great bully, and requires (what he has been long -labouring for) a hundred years of slavery to bring him to his senses. He -will have it that he is a great patriot, for he hates all other -countries; that he is wise, for he thinks all other people fools; that -he is honest, for he calls all other people whores and rogues. If being -in an ill-humour all one’s life is the perfection of human nature, then -John is very near it. He beats his wife, quarrels with his neighbours, -damns his servants, and gets drunk to kill the time and keep up his -spirits, and firmly believes himself the only unexceptionable, -accomplished, moral, and religious character in Christendom. He boasts -of the excellence of the laws, and the goodness of his own disposition; -and yet there are more people hanged in England than in all Europe -besides: he boasts of the modesty of his countrywomen, and yet there are -more prostitutes in the streets of London than in all the capitals of -Europe put together. He piques himself on his comforts, because he is -the most uncomfortable of mortals; and because he has no enjoyment in -society, seeks it, as he says, at his fireside, where he may be stupid -as a matter of course, sullen as a matter of right, and as ridiculous as -he chuses without being laughed at. His liberty is the effect of his -self-will; his religion owing to the spleen; his temper to the climate. -He is an industrious animal, because he has no taste for amusement, and -had rather work six days in the week than be idle one. His awkward -attempts at gaiety are the jest of other nations. ‘They,’ (the English), -says Froissard, speaking of the meeting of the Black Prince and the -French King, ‘amused themselves sadly, according to the custom of their -country,’—_se rejouissoient tristement, selon la coutume de leur pays_. -Their patience of labour is confined to what is repugnant and -disagreeable in itself, to the drudgery of the mechanic arts, and does -not extend to the fine arts; that is, they are indifferent to pain, but -insensible to pleasure. They will stand in a trench, or march up to a -breach, but they cannot bear to dwell long on an agreeable object. They -can no more submit to regularity in art than to decency in behaviour. -Their pictures are as coarse and slovenly as their address. John boasts -of his great men, without much right to do so; not that he has not had -them, but because he neither knows nor cares anything about them but to -swagger over other nations. That which chiefly hits John’s fancy in -Shakspeare is that he was a deer-stealer in his youth; and, as for -Newton’s discoveries, he hardly knows to this day that the earth is -round. John’s oaths, which are quite characteristic, have got him the -nickname of _Monsieur God-damn-me_. They are profane, a Frenchman’s -indecent. One swears by his vices, the other by their punishment. After -all John’s blustering, he is but a dolt. His habitual jealousy of others -makes him the inevitable dupe of quacks and impostors of all sorts; he -goes all lengths with one party out of spite to another; his zeal is as -furious as his antipathies are unfounded; and there is nothing half so -absurd or ignorant of its own intentions as an English mob. - - Z. - - - NO. 27.] ON GOOD-NATURE [JUNE 9, 1816. - -Lord Shaftesbury somewhere remarks, that a great many people pass for -very good-natured persons, for no other reason than because they care -about nobody but themselves; and, consequently, as nothing annoys them -but what touches their own interest, they never irritate themselves -unnecessarily about what does not concern them, and seem to be made of -the very milk of human kindness. - -Good-nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of -all the virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of -disposition. A good-natured man is, generally speaking, one who does not -like to be put out of his way; and as long as he can help it, that is, -till the provocation comes home to himself, he will not. He does not -create fictitious uneasiness out of the distresses of others; he does -not fret and fume, and make himself uncomfortable about things he cannot -mend, and that no way concern him, even if he could: but then there is -no one who is more apt to be disconcerted by what puts him to any -personal inconvenience, however trifling; who is more tenacious of his -selfish indulgences, however unreasonable; or who resents more violently -any interruption of his ease and comforts, the very trouble he is put to -in resenting it being felt as an aggravation of the injury. A person of -this character feels no emotions of anger or detestation, if you tell -him of the devastation of a province, or the massacre of the inhabitants -of a town, or the enslaving of a people; but if his dinner is spoiled by -a lump of soot falling down the chimney, he is thrown into the utmost -confusion, and can hardly recover a decent command of his temper for the -whole day. He thinks nothing can go amiss, so long as he is at his ease, -though a pain in his little finger makes him so peevish and quarrelsome, -that nobody can come near him. Knavery and injustice in the abstract are -things that by no means ruffle his temper, or alter the serenity of his -countenance, unless he is to be the sufferer by them; nor is he ever -betrayed into a passion in answering a sophism, if he does not think it -immediately directed against his own interest. - -On the contrary, we sometimes meet with persons who regularly heat -themselves in an argument, and get out of humour on every occasion, and -make themselves obnoxious to a whole company about nothing. This is not -because they are ill-tempered, but because they are in earnest. -Good-nature is a hypocrite: it tries to pass off its love of its own -ease and indifference to everything else for a particular softness and -mildness of disposition. All people get in a passion, and lose their -temper, if you offer to strike them, or cheat them of their money, that -is, if you interfere with that which they are really interested in. -Tread on the heel of one of these good-natured persons, who do not care -if the whole world is in flames, and see how he will bear it. If the -truth were known, the most disagreeable people are the most amiable. -They are the only persons who feel an interest in what does not concern -them. They have as much regard for others as they have for themselves. -They have as many vexations and causes of complaint as there are in the -world. They are general righters of wrongs, and redressers of -grievances. They not only are annoyed by what they can help, by an act -of inhumanity done in the next street, or in a neighbouring country by -their own countrymen, they not only do not claim any share in the glory, -and hate it the more, the more brilliant the success,—but a piece of -injustice done three thousand years ago touches them to the quick. They -have an unfortunate attachment to a set of abstract phrases, such as -_liberty_, _truth_, _justice_, _humanity_, _honour_, which are -continually abused by knaves, and misunderstood by fools, and they can -hardly contain themselves for spleen. They have something to keep them -in perpetual hot water. No sooner is one question set at rest than -another rises up to perplex them. They wear themselves to the bone in -the affairs of other people, to whom they can do no manner of service, -to the neglect of their own business and pleasure. They tease themselves -to death about the morality of the Turks, or the politics of the French. -There are certain words that afflict their ears, and things that -lacerate their souls, and remain a plague-spot there forever after. They -have a fellow-feeling with all that has been done, said, or thought in -the world. They have an interest in all science and in all art. They -hate a lie as much as a wrong, for truth is the foundation of all -justice. Truth is the first thing in their thoughts, then mankind, then -their country, last themselves. They love excellence, and bow to fame, -which is the shadow of it. Above all, they are anxious to see justice -done to the dead, as the best encouragement to the living, and the -lasting inheritance of future generations. They do not like to see a -great principle undermined, or the fall of a great man. They would -sooner forgive a blow in the face than a wanton attack on acknowledged -reputation. The contempt in which the French hold Shakspeare is a -serious evil to them; nor do they think the matter mended, when they -hear an Englishman, who would be thought a profound one, say that -Voltaire was a man without wit. They are vexed to see genius playing at -Tom Fool, and honesty turned bawd. It gives them a cutting sensation to -see a number of things which, as they are unpleasant to see, we shall -not here repeat. In short, they have a passion for truth; they feel the -same attachment to the idea of what is right, that a knave does to his -interest, or that a good-natured man does to his ease; and they have as -many sources of uneasiness as there are actual or supposed deviations -from this standard in the sum of things, or as there is a possibility of -folly and mischief in the world. - -Principle is a passion for truth; an incorrigible attachment to a -general proposition. Good-nature is humanity that costs nothing. No -good-natured man was ever a martyr to a cause, in religion or politics. -He has no idea of striving against the stream. He may become a good -courtier and a loyal subject; and it is hard if he does not, for he has -nothing to do in that case but to consult his ease, interest, and -outward appearances. The Vicar of Bray was a good-natured man. What a -pity he was but a vicar! A good-natured man is utterly unfit for any -situation or office in life that requires integrity, fortitude, or -generosity,—any sacrifice, except of opinion, or any exertion, but to -please. A good-natured man will debauch his friend’s mistress, if he has -an opportunity; and betray his friend, sooner than share disgrace or -danger with him. He will not forego the smallest gratification to save -the whole world. He makes his own convenience the standard of right and -wrong. He avoids the feeling of pain in himself, and shuts his eyes to -the sufferings of others. He will put a malefactor or an innocent person -(no matter which) to the rack, and only laugh at the uncouthness of the -gestures, or wonder that he is so unmannerly as to cry out. There is no -villainy to which he will not lend a helping hand with great coolness -and cordiality, for he sees only the pleasant and profitable side of -things. He will assent to a falsehood with a leer of complacency, and -applaud any atrocity that comes recommended in the garb of authority. He -will betray his country to please a Minister, and sign the death-warrant -of thousands of wretches, rather than forfeit the congenial smile, the -well-known squeeze of the hand. The shrieks of death, the torture of -mangled limbs, the last groans of despair, are things that shock his -smooth humanity too much ever to make an impression on it: his -good-nature sympathizes only with the smile, the bow, the gracious -salutation, the fawning answer: vice loses its sting, and corruption its -poison, in the oily gentleness of his disposition. He will not hear of -any thing wrong in Church or State. He will defend every abuse by which -any thing is to be got, every dirty job, every act of every Minister. In -an extreme case, a very good-natured man indeed may try to hang twelve -honester men than himself to rise at the Bar, and forge the seal of the -realm to continue his colleagues a week longer in office. He is a slave -to the will of others, a coward to their prejudices, a tool of their -vices. A good-natured man is no more fit to be trusted in public -affairs, than a coward or a woman is to lead an army. Spleen is the soul -of patriotism and of public good. Lord Castlereagh is a good-natured -man, Lord Eldon is a good-natured man, Charles Fox was a good-natured -man. The last instance is the most decisive. The definition of a true -patriot is _a good hater_. - -A king, who is a good-natured man, is in a fair way of being a great -tyrant. A king ought to feel concern for all to whom his power extends; -but a good-natured man cares only about himself. If he has a good -appetite, eats and sleeps well, nothing in the universe besides can -disturb him. The destruction of the lives or liberties of his subjects -will not stop him in the least of his caprices, but will concoct well -with his bile, and ‘good digestion wait on appetite, and health on -both.’ He will send out his mandate to kill and destroy with the same -indifference or satisfaction that he performs any natural function of -his body. The consequences are placed beyond the reach of his -imagination, or would not affect him if they were not, for he is a fool, -and good-natured. A good-natured man hates more than any one else -whatever thwarts his will, or contradicts his prejudices; and if he has -the power to prevent it, depend upon it, he will use it without remorse -and without control. - -There is a lower species of this character which is what is usually -understood by a _well-meaning man_. A well-meaning man is one who often -does a great deal of mischief without any kind of malice. He means no -one any harm, if it is not for his interest. He is not a knave, nor -perfectly honest. He does not easily resign a good place. Mr. Vansittart -is a well-meaning man. - -The Irish are a good-natured people; they have many virtues, but their -virtues are those of the heart, not of the head. In their passions and -affections they are sincere, but they are hypocrites in understanding. -If they once begin to calculate the consequences, self-interest -prevails. An Irishman who trusts to his principles, and a Scotchman who -yields to his impulses, are equally dangerous. The Irish have wit, -genius, eloquence, imagination, affections: but they want coherence of -understanding, and consequently have no standard of thought or action. -Their strength of mind does not keep pace with the warmth of their -feelings, or the quickness of their conceptions. Their animal spirits -run away with them: their reason is a jade. There is something crude, -indigested, rash, and discordant, in almost all that they do or say. -They have no system, no abstract ideas. They are ‘everything by starts, -and nothing long.’ They are a wild people. They hate whatever imposes a -law on their understandings, or a yoke on their wills. To betray the -principles they are most bound by their own professions and the -expectations of others to maintain, is with them a reclamation of their -original rights, and to fly in the face of their benefactors and -friends, an assertion of their natural freedom of will. They want -consistency and good faith. They unite fierceness with levity. In the -midst of their headlong impulses, they have an under-current of -selfishness and cunning, which in the end gets the better of them. Their -feelings, when no longer excited by novelty or opposition, grow cold and -stagnant. Their blood, if not heated by passion, turns to poison. They -have a rancour in their hatred of any object they have abandoned, -proportioned to the attachment they have professed to it. Their zeal, -converted against itself, is furious. The late Mr. Burke was an instance -of an Irish patriot and philosopher. He abused metaphysics, because he -could make nothing out of them, and turned his back upon liberty, when -he found he could get nothing more by her.[59]—See to the same purpose -the winding up of the character of _Judy_ in Miss Edgeworth’s _Castle -Rackrent_. - - T. T. - - - NO. 28.] ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON’S EVE [JULY 21, 1816. - -The difference between the character of _Eve_ in Milton and Shakspeare’s -female characters is very striking, and it appears to us to be this: -Milton describes _Eve_ not only as full of love and tenderness for -_Adam_, but as the constant object of admiration in herself. She is the -idol of the poet’s imagination, and he paints her whole person with a -studied profusion of charms. She is the wife, but she is still as much -as ever the mistress, of _Adam_. She is represented, indeed, as devoted -to her husband, as twining round him for support ‘as the vine curls her -tendrils,’ but her own grace and beauty are never lost sight of in the -picture of conjugal felicity. _Adam’s_ attention and regard are as much -turned to her as hers to him; for ‘in that first garden of their -innocence,’ he had no other objects or pursuits to distract his -attention; she was both his business and his pleasure. Shakspeare’s -females, on the contrary, seem to exist only in their attachment to -others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. Their features are -not painted, nor the colour of their hair. Their hearts only are laid -open. We are acquainted with _Imogen_, _Miranda_, _Ophelia_, or -_Desdemona_, by what they thought and felt, but we cannot tell whether -they were black, brown, or fair. But Milton’s _Eve_ is all of ivory and -gold. Shakspeare seldom tantalises the reader with a luxurious display -of the personal charms of his heroines, with a curious inventory of -particular beauties, except indirectly, and for some other purpose, as -where _Jachimo_ describes _Imogen_ asleep, or the old men in the -_Winter’s Tale_ vie with each other in invidious praise of _Perdita_. -Even in _Juliet_, the most voluptuous and glowing of the class of -characters here spoken of, we are reminded chiefly of circumstances -connected with the physiognomy of passion, as in her leaning with her -cheek upon her arm, or which only convey the general impression of -enthusiasm made on her lover’s brain. One thing may be said, that -Shakspeare had not the same opportunities as Milton: for his women were -clothed, and it cannot be denied that Milton took _Eve_ at a -considerable disadvantage in this respect. He has accordingly described -her in all the loveliness of nature, tempting to sight as the fruit of -the Hesperides guarded by that Dragon old, herself the fairest among the -flowers of Paradise! - -The figures both of _Adam_ and _Eve_ are very prominent in this poem. As -there is little action in it, the interest is constantly kept up by the -beauty and grandeur of the images. They are thus introduced: - - ‘Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, - Godlike erect, with native honour clad, - In naked majesty seemed lords of all, - And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine - The image of their glorious Maker shone: - - . . . . . - - ——Though both - Not equal, as their sex not equal seem’d; - For contemplation he and valour form’d, - For softness she and sweet attractive grace; - He for God only, she for God in him. - His fair large front and eye sublime declar’d - Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks - Round from his parted forelock manly hung - Clust’ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad; - She as a veil down to the slender waist - Her unadorned golden tresses wore - Dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d - As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied - Subjection, but required with gentle sway, - And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d, - Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, - And sweet reluctant amorous delay.’ - -_Eve_ is not only represented as beautiful, but with conscious beauty. -Shakspeare’s heroines are almost insensible of their charms, and wound -without knowing it. They are not coquets. If the salvation of mankind -had depended upon one of them, we don’t know—but the Devil might have -been baulked. This is but a conjecture! _Eve_ has a great idea of -herself, and there is some difficulty in prevailing on her to quit her -own image, the first time she discovers its reflection in the water. She -gives the following account of herself to _Adam_: - - ‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep - I first awak’d, and found myself repos’d - Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where - And what I was, whence thither brought and how. - Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound - Of waters issued from a cave, and spread - Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov’d - Pure as the expanse of Heav’n; I thither went - With unexperienc’d thought, and laid me down - On the green bank, to look into the clear - Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky. - As I bent down to look, just opposite - A shape within the watery gleam appear’d, - Bending to look on me; I started back, - It started back; but pleas’d I soon return’d, - Pleas’d it return’d as soon with answ’ring looks - Of sympathy and love.’... - -The poet afterwards adds: - - ‘So spake our general mother, and with eyes - Of conjugal attraction unreprov’d, - And meek surrender, half-embracing lean’d - On our first father; half her swelling breast - Naked met his under the flowing gold - Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight - Both of her beauty and submissive charms; - Smil’d with superior love, as Jupiter - On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds - That shed May flowers.’ - -The same thought is repeated with greater simplicity, and perhaps even -beauty, in the beginning of the Fifth Book: - - ——‘So much the more - His wonder was to find unawaken’d Eve - With tresses discompos’d and glowing cheek, - As through unquiet rest: he on his side - Leaning half-rais’d, with looks of cordial love - Hung over her enamour’d, and beheld - Beauty, which whether waking or asleep - Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voice - Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, - Her hand soft touching, whisper’d thus. Awake - My fairest, my espous’d, my latest found, - Heav’n’s last best gift, my ever new delight, - Awake’.... - -The general style, indeed, in which _Eve_ is addressed by _Adam_, or -described by the poet, is in the highest strain of compliment: - - ‘When Adam thus to Eve. Fair consort, the hour - Of night approaches.’... - - ‘To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn’d.’ - - ‘To whom our general ancestor replied, - Daughter of God and Man, accomplish’d Eve.’ - -_Eve_ is herself so well convinced that these epithets are her due, that -the idea follows her in her sleep, and she dreams of herself as the -paragon of nature, the wonder of the universe: - - ——‘Methought - Close at mine ear one call’d me forth to walk, - With gentle voice, I thought it thine; it said, - Why sleep’st thou, Eve? Now is the pleasant time, - The cool, the silent, save where silence yields - To the night-warbling bird, that now awake - Tunes sweetest his love-labour’d song; now reigns - Full-orb’d the moon, and with more pleasing light - Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain, - If none regard; Heav’n wakes with all his eyes, - Whom to behold but thee, Nature’s desire? - In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment - Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.’ - -This is the very topic, too, on which the Serpent afterwards enlarges -with so much artful insinuation and fatal confidence of success. ‘So -talked the spirited sly snake.’ The conclusion of the foregoing scene, -in which _Eve_ relates her dream and _Adam_ comforts her, is such an -exquisite piece of description, that, though not to our immediate -purpose, we cannot refrain from quoting it: - - ‘So cheer’d he his fair spouse, and she was cheer’d; - But silently a gentle tear let fall - From either eye, and wip’d them with her hair; - Two other precious drops that ready stood, - Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell - Kiss’d, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse - And pious awe, that fear’d to have offended.’ - -The formal eulogy on _Eve_ which _Adam_ addresses to the Angel, in -giving an account of his own creation and hers, is full of elaborate -grace: - - ‘Under his forming hands a creature grew, - . . . . . so lovely fair, - That what seem’d fair in all the world, seem’d now - Mean, or in her summ’d up, in her contained - And in her looks, which from that time infus’d - Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, - And into all things from her air inspir’d - The spirit of love and amorous delight.’ - -That which distinguishes Milton from the other poets, who have pampered -the eye and fed the imagination with exuberant descriptions of female -beauty, is the moral severity with which he has tempered them. There is -not a line in his works which tends to licentiousness, or the impression -of which, if it has such a tendency, is not effectually checked by -thought and sentiment. The following are two remarkable instances: - - ——‘In shadier bower - More secret and sequester’d, though but feign’d, - Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph, - Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess, - With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs, - Espoused Eve deck’d first her nuptial bed, - And heavenly quires the hymenœan sung, - What day the genial Angel to our sire - Brought her in naked beauty more adorn’d, - More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods - Endow’d with all their gifts, and O too like - In sad event, when to th’ unwiser son - Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar’d - Mankind by her fair looks, to be aveng’d - On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire.’ - -The other is a passage of extreme beauty and pathos blended. It is the -one in which the Angel is described as the guest of our first ancestors: - - ——‘Meanwhile at table Eve - Minister’d naked, and their flowing cups - With pleasant liquors crown’d: O innocence - Deserving Paradise! if ever, then, - Then had the sons of God excuse to have been - Enamour’d at that sight; but in those hearts - Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy - Was understood, the injur’d lover’s Hell.’ - -The character which a living poet has given of Spenser, would be much -more true of Milton: - - ——‘Yet not more sweet - Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise; - High Priest of all the Muses’ mysteries.’ - -Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into mysteries which do not -belong to the Muses. Milton’s voluptuousness is not lascivious or -sensual. He describes beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has -an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not -of the purest kind. The want of passion has been brought as an objection -against Milton, and his _Adam_ and _Eve_ have been considered as rather -insipid personages, wrapped up in one another, and who excite but little -sympathy in any one else. We do not feel this objection ourselves: we -are content to be spectators in such scenes, without any other -excitement. In general, the interest in Milton is essentially epic, and -not dramatic; and the difference between the epic and the dramatic is -this, that in the former the imagination produces the passion, and in -the latter the passion produces the imagination. The interest of epic -poetry arises from the contemplation of certain objects in themselves -grand and beautiful: the interest of dramatic poetry from sympathy with -the passions and pursuits of others; that is, from the practical -relations of certain persons to certain objects, as depending on -accident or will. - -The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects; the imagination of them is -necessarily attended with passion; but they have no dramatic interest, -till circumstances connect them with some human catastrophe. Now, a poem -might be constructed almost entirely of such images, of the highest -intellectual passion, with little dramatic interest; and it is in this -way that Milton has in a great measure constructed his poem. That is not -its fault, but its excellence. The fault is in those who have no idea -but of one kind of interest. But this question would lead to a longer -discussion than we have room for at present. We shall conclude these -extracts from Milton with two passages, which have always appeared to us -to be highly affecting, and to contain a fine discrimination of -character: - - ‘O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death! - Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave - Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades, - Fit haunt of Gods? Where I had hope to spend, - Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day - That must be mortal to us both? O flowers, - That never will in other climate grow, - My early visitation and my last - At even, which I bred up with tender hand - From the first opening bud, and gave ye names, - Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank - Your tribes, and water from th’ ambrosial fount? - Thee, lastly, nuptial bow’r, by me adorn’d - With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee - How shall I part, and whither wander down - Into a lower world, to this obscure - And wild? how shall we breathe in other air - Less pure, accustom’d to immortal fruits?’ - -This is the lamentation of _Eve_ on being driven out of Paradise. Adam’s -reflections are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing -his submission to the will of his Maker, he says: - - ‘This most afflicts me, that departing hence - As from his face I shall be hid, depriv’d - His blessed countenance; here I could frequent - With worship place by place where he vouchsaf’d - Presence divine, and to my sons relate, - On this mount he appeared, under this tree - Stood visible, among these pines his voice - I heard, here with him at this fountain talk’d: - So many grateful altars I would rear - Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone - Of lustre from the brook, in memory - Or monument to ages, and thereon - Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow’rs: - In yonder nether world where shall I seek - His bright appearances or footstep trace? - For though I fled him angry, yet recall’d - To life prolong’d and promis’d race, I now - Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts - Of glory, and far off his steps adore.’ - - W. H. - - - NO. 29.] OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM [AUG. 21, 28, - THE EXCURSION 1814. - -The poem of The _Excursion_ resembles that part of the country in which -the scene is laid. It has the same vastness and magnificence, with the -same nakedness and confusion. It has the same overwhelming, oppressive -power. It excites or recalls the same sensations which those who have -traversed that wonderful scenery must have felt. We are surrounded with -the constant sense and superstitious awe of the collective power of -matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which, from the -beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression. Here are no -dotted lines, no hedge-row beauties, no box-tree borders, no gravel -walks, no square mechanic inclosures; all is left loose and irregular in -the rude chaos of aboriginal nature. The boundaries of hill and valley -are the poet’s only geography, where we wander with him incessantly over -deep beds of moss and waving fern, amidst the troops of red-deer and -wild animals. Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth’s taste, -that we doubt whether he would not reject a druidical temple, or -time-hallowed ruin as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only -familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, -which has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the -world, or with the rocky fissure between two mountains caused by -thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it -were, coëval with the primary forms of things; his imagination holds -immediately from nature, and ‘owes no allegiance’ but ‘to the elements.’ - -The _Excursion_ may be considered as a philosophical pastoral poem,—as a -scholastic romance. It is less a poem on the country, than on the love -of the country. It is not so much a description of natural objects, as -of the feelings associated with them; not an account of the manners of -rural life, but the result of the poet’s reflections on it. He does not -present the reader with a lively succession of images or incidents, but -paints the outgoings of his own heart, the shapings of his own fancy. He -may be said to create his own materials; his thoughts are his real -subject. His understanding broods over that which is ‘without form and -void,’ and ‘makes it pregnant.’ He sees all things in himself. He hardly -ever avails himself of remarkable objects or situations, but, in -general, rejects them as interfering with the workings of his own mind, -as disturbing the smooth, deep, majestic current of his own feelings. -Thus his descriptions of natural scenery are not brought home distinctly -to the naked eye by forms and circumstances, but every object is seen -through the medium of innumerable recollections, is clothed with the -haze of imagination like a glittering vapour, is obscured with the -excess of glory, has the shadowy brightness of a waking dream. The image -is lost in the sentiment, as sound in the multiplication of echoes. - - ‘And visions, as prophetic eyes avow, - Hang on each leaf, and cling to every bough.’ - -In describing human nature, Mr. Wordsworth equally shuns the common -‘vantage-grounds of popular story, of striking incident, or fatal -catastrophe, as cheap and vulgar modes of producing an effect. He scans -the human race as the naturalist measures the earth’s zone, without -attending to the picturesque points of view, the abrupt inequalities of -surface. He contemplates the passions and habits of men, not in their -extremes, but in their first elements; their follies and vices, not at -their height, with all their embossed evils upon their heads, but as -lurking in embryo,—the seeds of the disorder inwoven with our very -constitution. He only sympathises with those simple forms of feeling, -which mingle at once with his own identity, or with the stream of -general humanity. To him the great and the small are the same; the near -and the remote; what appears, and what only is. The general and the -permanent, like the Platonic ideas, are his only realities. All -accidental varieties and individual contrasts are lost in an endless -continuity of feeling, like drops of water in the ocean-stream! An -intense intellectual egotism swallows up every thing. Even the dialogues -introduced in the present volume are soliloquies of the same character, -taking different views of the subject. The recluse, the pastor, and the -pedlar, are three persons in one poet. We ourselves disapprove of these -‘interlocutions between Lucius and Caius’ as impertinent babbling, where -there is no dramatic distinction of character. But the evident scope and -tendency of Mr. Wordsworth’s mind is the reverse of dramatic. It resists -all change of character, all variety of scenery, all the bustle, -machinery, and pantomime of the stage, or of real life,—whatever might -relieve, or relax, or change the direction of its own activity, jealous -of all competition. The power of his mind preys upon itself. It is as if -there were nothing but himself and the universe. He lives in the busy -solitude of his own heart; in the deep silence of thought. His -imagination lends life and feeling only to ‘the bare trees and mountains -bare’; peoples the viewless tracts of air, and converses with the silent -clouds! - -We could have wished that our author had given to his work the form of a -didactic poem altogether, with only occasional digressions or allusions -to particular instances. But he has chosen to encumber himself with a -load of narrative and description, which sometimes hinders the progress -and effect of the general reasoning, and which, instead of being inwoven -with the text, would have come in better in plain prose as notes at the -end of the volume. Mr. Wordsworth, indeed, says finely, and perhaps as -truly as finely: - - ‘Exchange the shepherd’s frock of native grey - For robes with regal purple tinged; convert - The crook into a sceptre; give the pomp - Of circumstance; and here the tragic Muse - Shall find apt subjects for her highest art. - Amid the groves, beneath the shadowy hills, - The generations are prepared; the pangs, - The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife - Of poor humanity’s afflicted will - Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ - -But he immediately declines availing himself of these resources of the -rustic moralist: for the priest, who officiates as ‘the sad historian of -the pensive plain’ says in reply: - - ‘Our system is not fashioned to preclude - That sympathy which you for others ask: - And I could tell, not travelling for my theme - Beyond the limits of these humble graves, - Of strange disasters; but I pass them by, - Loth to disturb what Heaven hath hushed to peace.’ - -There is, in fact, in Mr. Wordsworth’s mind an evident repugnance to -admit anything that tells for itself, without the interpretation of the -poet,—a fastidious antipathy to immediate effect,—a systematic -unwillingness to share the palm with his subject. Where, however, he has -a subject presented to him, ‘such as the meeting soul may pierce,’ and -to which he does not grudge to lend the aid of his fine genius, his -powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of -his classical predecessor, Akenside. Among several others which we might -select we give the following passage, describing the religion of ancient -Greece: - - ‘In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretch’d - On the soft grass through half a summer’s day, - With music lulled his indolent repose: - And in some fit of weariness, if he, - When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear - A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds - Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch’d, - Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, - A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, - And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. - The nightly hunter, lifting up his eyes - Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart - Called on the lovely wanderer, who bestowed - That timely light, to share his joyous sport: - And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs - Across the lawn and through the darksome grove, - (Nor unaccompanied with tuneful notes - By echo multiplied from rock or cave), - Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars - Glance rapidly along the clouded heavens, - When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked - His thirst from rill, or gushing fount, and thanked - The Naiad. Sun beams, upon distant hills - Gliding apace, with shadows in their train, - Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed - Into fleet Oreads, sporting visibly. - The zephyrs fanning as they passed their wings - Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed - With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, - Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, - From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth - In the low vale, or on steep mountain side: - And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns - Of the live deer, or goat’s depending beard; - These were the lurking satyrs, a wild brood - Of gamesome Deities! or Pan himself, - The simple shepherd’s awe-inspiring God.’ - -The foregoing is one of a succession of splendid passages equally -enriched with philosophy and poetry, tracing the fictions of Eastern -mythology to the immediate intercourse of the imagination with Nature, -and to the habitual propensity of the human mind to endow the outward -forms of being with life and conscious motion. With this expansive and -animating principle, Mr. Wordsworth has forcibly, but somewhat severely, -contrasted the cold, narrow, lifeless spirit of modern philosophy: - - ‘How, shall our great discoverers obtain - From sense and reason less than these obtained, - Though far misled? Shall men for whom our age - Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared, - To explore the world without and world within, - Be joyless as the blind? Ambitious souls— - Whom earth at this late season hath produced - To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh - The planets in the hollow of their hand; - And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains - Have solved the elements, or analysed - The thinking principle—shall they in fact - Prove a degraded race? And what avails - Renown, if their presumption make them such? - Inquire of ancient wisdom; go, demand - Of mighty nature, if ’twas ever meant - That we should pry far off, yet be unraised; - That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore, - Viewing all objects unremittingly - In disconnection dead and spiritless; - And still dividing and dividing still - Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied - With the perverse attempt, while littleness - May yet become more little; waging thus - An impious warfare with the very life - Of our own souls! And if indeed there be - An all-pervading spirit, upon whom - Our dark foundations rest, could he design, - That this magnificent effect of power, - The earth we tread, the sky which we behold - By day, and all the pomp which night reveals, - That these—and that superior mystery, - Our vital frame, so fearfully devised, - And the dread soul within it—should exist - Only to be examined, pondered, searched, - Probed, vexed, and criticised—to be prized - No more than as a mirror that reflects - To proud Self-love her own intelligence?’ - -From the chemists and metaphysicians our author turns to the laughing -sage of France, Voltaire. ‘Poor gentleman, it fares no better with him, -for he’s a wit.’ We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Wordsworth that -_Candide_ is _dull_. It is, if our author pleases, ‘the production of a -scoffer’s pen,’ or it is any thing but dull. It may not be proper in a -grave, discreet, orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his -opinions in the contraction or distension of his patron’s brow, to allow -any merit to a work like _Candide_; but we conceive that it would have -been more manly in Mr. Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt -the cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the epithet, after it had -peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a little, narrow, -inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a man of genius. -The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural. There is a frankness -and sincerity of opinion, which is a paramount obligation in all -questions of intellect, though it may not govern the decisions of the -spiritual courts, who may, however, be safely left to take care of their -own interests. There is a plain directness and simplicity of -understanding, which is the only security against the evils of levity, -on the one hand, or of hypocrisy on the other. A speculative bigot is a -solecism in the intellectual world. We can assure Mr. Wordsworth, that -we should not have bestowed so much serious consideration on a single -voluntary perversion of language, but that our respect for his character -makes us jealous of his smallest faults! - -With regard to his general philippic against the contractedness and -egotism of philosophical pursuits, we only object to its not being -carried further. We shall not affirm with Rousseau (his authority would -perhaps have little weight with Mr. Wordsworth)—‘_Tout homme reflechi -est mechant_‘; but we conceive that the same reasoning which Mr. -Wordsworth applies so eloquently and justly to the natural philosopher -and metaphysician may be extended to the moralist, the divine, the -politician, the orator, the artist, and even the poet. And why so? -Because wherever an intense activity is given to any one faculty, it -necessarily prevents the due and natural exercise of others. Hence all -those professions or pursuits, where the mind is exclusively occupied -with the ideas of things as they exist in the imagination or -understanding, as they call for the exercise of intellectual activity, -and not as they are connected with practical good or evil, must check -the genial expansion of the moral sentiments and social affections; must -lead to a cold and dry abstraction, as they are found to suspend the -animal functions, and relax the bodily frame. Hence the complaint of the -want of natural sensibility and constitutional warmth of attachment in -those persons who have been devoted to the pursuit of any art or -science,—of their restless morbidity of temperament, and indifference to -every thing that does not furnish an occasion for the display of their -mental superiority and the gratification of their vanity. The -philosophical poet himself, perhaps, owes some of his love of nature to -the opportunity it affords him of analyzing his own feelings, and -contemplating his own powers,—of making every object about him a whole -length mirror to reflect his favourite thoughts, and of looking down on -the frailties of others in undisturbed leisure, and from a more -dignified height. - -One of the most interesting parts of this work is that in which the -author treats of the French Revolution, and of the feelings connected -with it, in ingenuous minds, in its commencement and its progress. The -_solitary_,[60] who, by domestic calamities and disappointments, had -been cut off from society, and almost from himself, gives the following -account of the manner in which he was roused from his melancholy: - - ‘From that abstraction I was roused—and how? - Even as a thoughtful shepherd by a flash - Of lightning, startled in a gloomy cave - Of these wild hills. For, lo! the dread Bastile, - With all the chambers in its horrid towers, - Fell to the ground: by violence o’erthrown - Of indignation; and with shouts that drowned - The crash it made in falling! From the wreck - A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, - The appointed seat of equitable law - And mild paternal sway. The potent shock - I felt; the transformation I perceived, - As marvellously seized as in that moment, - When, from the blind mist issuing, I beheld - Glory—beyond all glory ever seen, - Dazzling the soul! Meanwhile prophetic harps - In every grove were ringing, “War shall cease: - Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured? - Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck - The tree of liberty!”—My heart rebounded: - My melancholy voice the chorus joined. - Thus was I reconverted to the world; - Society became my glittering bride, - And airy hopes my children. From the depths - Of natural passion seemingly escaped, - My soul diffused itself in wide embrace - Of institutions and the forms of things. - ——If with noise - And acclamation, crowds in open air - Expressed the tumult of their minds, my voice - There mingled, heard or not. And in still groves, - Where wild enthusiasts tuned a pensive lay - Of thanks and expectation, in accord - With their belief, I sang Saturnian rule - Returned—a progeny of golden years - Permitted to descend, and bless mankind. - - . . . . . - - Scorn and contempt forbid me to proceed! - But history, time’s slavish scribe, will tell - How rapidly the zealots of the cause - Disbanded—or in hostile ranks appeared: - Some, tired of honest service; these outdone, - Disgusted, therefore, or appalled by aims - Of fiercer zealots. So confusion reigned, - And the more faithful were compelled to exclaim, - As Brutus did to virtue, “Liberty, - I worshipped thee, and find thee but a shade!” - SUCH RECANTATION HAD FOR ME NO CHARM, - NOR WOULD I BEND TO IT.’ - -The subject is afterwards resumed, with the same magnanimity and -philosophical firmness: - - ——‘For that other loss, - The loss of confidence in social man, - By the unexpected transports of our age - Carried so high, that every thought which looked - Beyond the temporal destiny of the kind— - To many seemed superfluous; as no cause - For such exalted confidence could e’er - Exist; so, none is now for such despair. - The two extremes are equally remote - From truth and reason; do not, then, confound - One with the other, but reject them both; - And choose the middle point, whereon to build - Sound expectations. This doth he advise - Who shared at first the illusion. At this day, - When a Tartarian darkness overspreads - The groaning nations; when the impious rule, - By will or by established ordinance, - Their own dire agents, and constrain the good - To acts which they abhor; though I bewail - This triumph, yet the pity of my heart - Prevents me not from owning that the law, - By which mankind now suffers, is most just. - For by superior energies; more strict - Affiance in each other; faith more firm - In their unhallowed principles, the bad - Have fairly earned a victory o’er the weak, - The vacillating, inconsistent good.’ - -In the application of these memorable lines, we should, perhaps, differ -a little from Mr. Wordsworth; nor can we indulge with him in the fond -conclusion afterwards hinted at, that one day _our_ triumph, the triumph -of humanity and liberty, may be complete. For this purpose, we think -several things necessary which are impossible. It is a consummation -which cannot happen till the nature of things is changed, till the many -become as united as the _one_, till romantic generosity shall be as -common as gross selfishness, till reason shall have acquired the -obstinate blindness of prejudice, till the love of power and of change -shall no longer goad man on to restless action, till passion and will, -hope and fear, love and hatred, and the objects proper to excite them, -that is, alternate good and evil, shall no longer sway the bosoms and -businesses of men. All things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless -round; our strength lies in our weakness; our virtues are built on our -vices; our faculties are as limited as our being; nor can we lift man -above his nature more than above the earth he treads. But though we -cannot weave over again the airy, unsubstantial dream, which reason and -experience have dispelled, - - ‘What though the radiance, which was once so bright, - Be now for ever taken from our sight, - Though nothing can bring back the hour - Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower’:— - -yet we will never cease, nor be prevented from returning on the wings of -imagination to that bright dream of our youth; that glad dawn of the -day-star of liberty; that spring-time of the world, in which the hopes -and expectations of the human race seemed opening in the same gay career -with our own; when France called her children to partake her equal -blessings beneath her laughing skies; when the stranger was met in all -her villages with dance and festive songs, in celebration of a new and -golden era; and when, to the retired and contemplative student, the -prospects of human happiness and glory were seen ascending like the -steps of Jacob’s ladder, in bright and never-ending succession. The dawn -of that day was suddenly overcast; that season of hope is past; it is -fled with the other dreams of our youth, which we cannot recal, but has -left behind it traces, which are not to be effaced by Birth-day and -Thanks-giving odes, or the chaunting of _Te Deums_ in all the churches -of Christendom. To those hopes eternal regrets are due; to those who -maliciously and wilfully blasted them, in the fear that they might be -accomplished, we feel no less what we owe—hatred and scorn as lasting! - - - NO. 30.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [OCT. 2, 1814. - -Mr. Wordsworth’s writings exhibit all the internal power, without the -external form of poetry. He has scarcely any of the pomp and decoration -and scenic effect of poetry: no gorgeous palaces nor solemn temples awe -the imagination; no cities rise ‘with glistering spires and pinnacles -adorned’; we meet with no knights pricked forth on airy steeds; no -hair-breadth ‘scapes and perilous accidents by flood or field. Either -from the predominant habit of his mind not requiring the stimulus of -outward impressions, or from the want of an imagination teeming with -various forms, he takes the common every-day events and objects of -nature, or rather seeks those that are the most simple and barren of -effect; but he adds to them a weight of interest from the resources of -his own mind, which makes the most insignificant things serious and even -formidable. All other interests are absorbed in the deeper interest of -his own thoughts, and find the same level. His mind magnifies the -littleness of his subject, and raises its meanness; lends it his -strength, and clothes it with borrowed grandeur. With him, a mole-hill, -covered with wild thyme, assumes the importance of ‘the great vision of -the guarded mount’: a puddle is filled with preternatural faces, and -agitated with the fiercest storms of passion. - -The extreme simplicity which some persons have objected to in Mr. -Wordsworth’s poetry, is to be found only in the subject and the style: -the sentiments are subtle and profound. In the latter respect, his -poetry is as much above the common standard or capacity, as in the other -it is below it. His poems bear a distant resemblance to some of -Rembrandt’s landscapes, who, more than any other painter, created the -medium through which he saw nature, and out of the stump of an old tree, -a break in the sky, and a bit of water, could produce an effect almost -miraculous. - -Mr. Wordsworth’s poems in general are the history of a refined and -contemplative mind, conversant only with itself and nature. An intense -feeling of the associations of this kind is the peculiar and -characteristic feature of all his productions. He has described the love -of nature better than any other poet. This sentiment, inly felt in all -its force, and sometimes carried to an excess, is the source both of his -strength and of his weakness. However we may sympathise with Mr. -Wordsworth in his attachment to groves and fields, we cannot extend the -same admiration to their inhabitants, or to the manners of country life -in general. We go along with him, while he is the subject of his own -narrative, but we take leave of him when he makes pedlars and ploughmen -his heroes and the interpreters of his sentiments. It is, we think, -getting into low company, and company, besides, that we do not like. We -take Mr. Wordsworth himself for a great poet, a fine moralist, and a -deep philosopher; but if he insists on introducing us to a friend of -his, a parish clerk, or the barber of the village, who is as wise as -himself, we must be excused if we draw back with some little want of -cordial faith. We are satisfied with the friendship which subsisted -between _Parson Adams_ and _Joseph Andrews_. The author himself lets out -occasional hints that all is not as it should be amongst these northern -Arcadians. Though, in general, he professes to soften the harsher -features of rustic vice, he has given us one picture of depraved and -inveterate selfishness, which we apprehend could only be found among the -inhabitants of these boasted mountain districts. The account of one of -his heroines concludes as follows: - - ‘A sudden illness seiz’d her in the strength - Of life’s autumnal season. Shall I tell - How on her bed of death the matron lay, - To Providence submissive, so she thought; - But fretted, vexed, and wrought upon—almost - To anger, by the malady that griped - Her prostrate frame with unrelaxing power, - As the fierce eagle fastens on the lamb. - She prayed, she moaned—her husband’s sister watched - Her dreary pillow, waited on her needs; - And yet the very sound of that kind foot - Was anguish to her ears! “And must she rule - Sole mistress of this house when I am gone? - Sit by my fire—possess what I possessed— - Tend what I tended—calling it her own!” - Enough;—I fear too much. Of nobler feeling - Take this example:—One autumnal evening, - While she was yet in prime of health and strength, - I well remember, while I passed her door, - Musing with loitering step, and upward eye - Turned tow’rds the planet Jupiter, that hung - Above the centre of the vale, a voice - Roused me, her voice;—it said, “That glorious star - In its untroubled element will shine - As now it shines, when we are laid in earth, - And safe from all our sorrows.” She is safe, - And her uncharitable acts, I trust, - And harsh unkindnesses, are all forgiven; - Though, in this vale, remembered with deep awe!’ - -We think it is pushing our love of the admiration of natural objects a -good deal too far, to make it a set-off against a story like the -preceding. - -All country people hate each other. They have so little comfort, that -they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and -nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being -accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it—stupid, -for want of thought—selfish, for want of society. There is nothing good -to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have -it. They had rather injure themselves than oblige any one else. Their -common mode of life is a system of wretchedness and self-denial, like -what we read of among barbarous tribes. You live out of the world. You -cannot get your tea and sugar without sending to the next town for it: -you pay double, and have it of the worst quality. The small-beer is sure -to be sour—the milk skimmed—the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You -cannot do a single thing you like; you cannot walk out or sit at home, -or write or read, or think or look as if you did, without being subject -to impertinent curiosity. The apothecary annoys you with his -complaisance; the parson with his superciliousness. If you are poor, you -are despised; if you are rich, you are feared and hated. If you do any -one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is up in arms; the clamour is like -that of a rookery; and the person himself, it is ten to one, laughs at -you for your pains, and takes the first opportunity of shewing you that -he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation. There is a perpetual -round of mischief-making and backbiting for want of any better -amusement. There are no shops, no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no -concerts, no pictures, no public-buildings, no crowded streets, no noise -of coaches, or of courts of law,—neither courtiers nor courtesans, no -literary parties, no fashionable routs, no society, no books, or -knowledge of books. Vanity and luxury are the civilisers of the world, -and sweeteners of human life. Without objects either of pleasure or -action, it grows harsh and crabbed: the mind becomes stagnant, the -affections callous, and the eye dull. Man left to himself soon -degenerates into a very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad -enough; but rustic ignorance is intolerable. Aristotle has observed, -that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. If so, a -company of tragedians should be established at the public expence, in -every village or hundred, as a better mode of education than either -Bell’s or Lancaster’s. The benefits of knowledge are never so well -understood as from seeing the effects of ignorance, in their naked, -undisguised state, upon the common country people. Their selfishness and -insensibility are perhaps less owing to the hardships and privations, -which make them, like people out at sea in a boat, ready to devour one -another, than to their having no idea of anything beyond themselves and -their immediate sphere of action. They have no knowledge of, and -consequently can take no interest in, anything which is not an object of -their senses, and of their daily pursuits. They hate all strangers, and -have generally a nickname for the inhabitants of the next village. The -two young noblemen in Guzman d’Alfarache, who went to visit their -mistresses only a league out of Madrid, were set upon by the peasants, -who came round them calling out, ‘_A wolf_.’ Those who have no enlarged -or liberal ideas, can have no disinterested or generous sentiments. -Persons who are in the habit of reading novels and romances, are -compelled to take a deep interest in, and to have their affections -strongly excited by, fictitious characters and imaginary situations; -their thoughts and feelings are constantly carried out of themselves, to -persons they never saw, and things that never existed: history enlarges -the mind, by familiarising us with the great vicissitudes of human -affairs, and the catastrophes of states and kingdoms; the study of -morals accustoms us to refer our actions to a general standard of right -and wrong; and abstract reasoning, in general, strengthens the love of -truth, and produces an inflexibility of principle which cannot stoop to -low trick and cunning. Books, in Lord Bacon’s phrase, are ‘a discipline -of humanity.’ Country people have none of these advantages, nor any -others to supply the place of them. Having no circulating libraries to -exhaust their love of the marvellous, they amuse themselves with -fancying the disasters and disgraces of their particular acquaintance. -Having no hump-backed _Richard_ to excite their wonder and abhorrence, -they make themselves a bugbear of their own, out of the first obnoxious -person they can lay their hands on. Not having the fictitious distresses -and gigantic crimes of poetry to stimulate their imagination and their -passions, they vent their whole stock of spleen, malice, and invention, -on their friends and next-door neighbours. They get up a little pastoral -drama at home, with fancied events, but real characters. All their spare -time is spent in manufacturing and propagating the lie for the day, -which does its office, and expires. The next day is spent in the same -manner. It is thus that they embellish the simplicity of rural life! The -common people in civilised countries are a kind of domesticated savages. -They have not the wild imagination, the passions, the fierce energies, -or dreadful vicissitudes of the savage tribes, nor have they the -leisure, the indolent enjoyments and romantic superstitions, which -belonged to the pastoral life in milder climates, and more remote -periods of society. They are taken out of a state of nature, without -being put in possession of the refinements of art. The customs and -institutions of society cramp their imaginations without giving them -knowledge. If the inhabitants of the mountainous districts described by -Mr. Wordsworth are less gross and sensual than others, they are more -selfish. Their egotism becomes more concentrated, as they are more -insulated, and their purposes more inveterate, as they have less -competition to struggle with. The weight of matter which surrounds them, -crushes the finer sympathies. Their minds become hard and cold, like the -rocks which they cultivate. The immensity of their mountains makes the -human form appear little and insignificant. Men are seen crawling -between Heaven and earth, like insects to their graves. Nor do they -regard one another more than flies on a wall. Their physiognomy -expresses the materialism of their character, which has only one -principle—rigid self-will. They move on with their eyes and foreheads -fixed, looking neither to the right nor to the left, with a heavy slouch -in their gait, and seeming as if nothing would divert them from their -path. We do not admire this plodding pertinacity, always directed to the -main chance. There is nothing which excites so little sympathy in our -minds, as exclusive selfishness. If our theory is wrong, at least it is -taken from pretty close observation, and is, we think, confirmed by Mr. -Wordsworth’s own account. - -Of the stories contained in the latter part of the volume, we like that -of the Whig and Jacobite friends, and of the good knight, Sir Alfred -Irthing, the best. The last reminded us of a fine sketch of a similar -character in the beautiful poem of _Hart Leap Well_. To conclude,—if the -skill with which the poet had chosen his materials had been equal to the -power which he has undeniably exerted over them, if the objects (whether -persons or things) which he makes use of as the vehicle of his -sentiments, had been such as to convey them in all their depth and -force, then the production before us might indeed ‘have proved a -monument,’ as he himself wishes it, worthy of the author, and of his -country. Whether, as it is, this very original and powerful performance -may not rather remain like one of those stupendous but half-finished -structures, which have been suffered to moulder into decay, because the -cost and labour attending them exceeded their use or beauty, we feel -that it would be presumptuous in us to determine. - - - NO. 31.] CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. PITT[61] - -The character of Mr. Pitt was, perhaps, one of the most singular that -ever existed. With few talents, and fewer virtues, he acquired and -preserved, in one of the most trying situations, and in spite of all -opposition, the highest reputation for the possession of every moral -excellence, and as having carried the attainments of eloquence and -wisdom as far as human abilities could go. This he did (strange as it -may appear) by a negation (together with the common virtues) of the -common vices of human nature, and by the complete negation of every -other talent that might interfere with the only ones which he possessed -in a supreme degree, and which, indeed, may be made to include the -appearance of all others,—an artful use of words, and a certain -dexterity of logical arrangement. In these alone his power consisted; -and the defect of all other qualities, which usually constitute -greatness, contributed to the more complete success of these. Having no -strong feelings, no distinct perceptions,—his mind having no link, as it -were, to connect it with the world of external nature, every subject -presented to him nothing more than a _tabula rasa_, on which he was at -liberty to lay whatever colouring of language he pleased; having no -general principles, no comprehensive views of things, no moral habits of -thinking, no system of action, there was nothing to hinder him from -pursuing any particular purpose by any means that offered; having never -any plan, he could not be convicted of inconsistency, and his own pride -and obstinacy were the only rules of his conduct. Without insight into -human nature, without sympathy with the passions of men, or apprehension -of their real designs, he seemed perfectly insensible to the -consequences of things, and would believe nothing till it actually -happened. The fog and haze in which he saw every thing communicated -itself to others; and the total indistinctness and uncertainty of his -own ideas tended to confound the perceptions of his hearers more -effectually than the most ingenious misrepresentation could have done. -Indeed, in defending his conduct, he never seemed to consider himself as -at all responsible for the success of his measures, or to suppose that -future events were in our own power; but that, as the best-laid schemes -might fail, and there was no providing against all possible -contingencies, this was sufficient excuse for our plunging at once into -any dangerous or absurd enterprise without the least regard to -consequences. His reserved logic confined itself solely to the -_possible_ and the _impossible_, and he appeared to regard the -_probable_ and _improbable_, the only foundation of moral prudence or -political wisdom, as beneath the notice of a profound statesman; as if -the pride of the human intellect were concerned in never entrusting -itself with subjects, where it may be compelled to acknowledge its -weakness. Nothing could ever drive him out of his dull forms, and naked -generalities; which, as they are susceptible neither of degree nor -variation, are therefore equally applicable to every emergency that can -happen: and in the most critical aspect of affairs, he saw nothing but -the same flimsy web of remote possibilities and metaphysical -uncertainty. In his mind, the wholesome pulp of practical wisdom and -salutary advice was immediately converted into the dry chaff and husks -of a miserable logic. From his manner of reasoning, he seemed not to -have believed that the truth of his statements depended on the reality -of the facts, but that the facts themselves depended on the order in -which he arranged them in words: you would not suppose him to be -agitating a serious question, which had real grounds to go upon, but to -be declaiming upon an imaginary thesis, proposed as an exercise in the -schools. He never set himself to examine the force of the objections -that were brought against him, or attempted to defend his measures upon -clear, solid grounds of his own; but constantly contented himself with -first gravely stating the logical form, or dilemma to which the question -reduced itself; and then, after having declared his opinion, proceeded -to amuse his hearers by a series of rhetorical common-places, connected -together in grave, sonorous, and elaborately constructed periods, -without ever shewing their real application to the subject in dispute. -Thus, if any member of the opposition disapproved of any measure, and -enforced his objections by pointing out the many evils with which it was -fraught, or the difficulties attending its execution, his only answer -was, ‘that it was true there might be inconveniences attending the -measure proposed, but we were to remember, that every expedient that -could be devised might be said to be nothing more than a choice of -difficulties, and that all that human prudence could do, was to consider -on which side the advantages lay; that, for his part, he conceived that -the present measure was attended with more advantages and fewer -disadvantages than any other that could be adopted; that it we were -diverted from our object by every appearance of difficulty, the wheels -of government would be clogged by endless delays and imaginary -grievances; that most of the objections made to the measure appeared to -him to be trivial, others of them unfounded and improbable; or that, if -a scheme, free from all these objections, could be proposed, it might, -after all, prove inefficient; while, in the meantime, a material object -remained unprovided for, or the opportunity of action was lost.’ This -mode of reasoning is admirably described by Hobbes, in speaking of the -writings of some of the schoolmen, of whom he says that ‘they had -learned the trick of imposing what they list upon their readers, and -declining the force of true reason by verbal forks, that is, -distinctions, which signify nothing, but serve only to astonish the -multitude of ignorant men.’ That what we have here stated comprehends -the whole force of his mind, which consisted solely in this evasive -dexterity and perplexing formality, assisted by a copiousness of words -and common-place topics, will, we think, be evident to any one who -carefully looks over his speeches, undazzled by the reputation or -personal influence of the speaker. It will be in vain to look in them -for any of the common proofs of human genius or wisdom. He has not left -behind him a single memorable saying,—not one profound maxim,—one solid -observation,—one forcible description,—one beautiful thought,—one -humorous picture,—one affecting sentiment. He has made no addition -whatever to the stock of human knowledge. He did not possess any one of -those faculties which contribute to the instruction and delight of -mankind,—depth of understanding, imagination, sensibility, wit, -vivacity, clear and solid judgment. But it may be asked, If these -qualities are not to be found in him, where are we to look for them? and -we may be required to point out instances of them. We shall answer then, -that he had none of the abstract, legislative wisdom, refined sagacity, -or rich, impetuous, high-wrought imagination of Burke; the manly -eloquence, exact knowledge, vehemence, and natural simplicity of Fox; -the ease, brilliancy, and acuteness of Sheridan. It is not merely that -he had not all these qualities in the degree that they were severally -possessed by his rivals, but he had not any of them in any remarkable -degree. His reasoning is a technical arrangement of unmeaning -common-places, his eloquence rhetorical, his style monotonous and -artificial. If he could pretend to any one excellence more than another, -it was to taste in composition. There is certainly nothing low, nothing -puerile, nothing far-fetched or abrupt in his speeches; there is a kind -of faultless regularity pervading them throughout; but in the confined, -formal, passive mode of eloquence which he adopted, it seemed rather -more difficult to commit errors than to avoid them. A man who is -determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way. -However, habit, joined to the peculiar mechanical memory which he -possessed, carried this correctness to a degree which, in an -extemporaneous speaker, was almost miraculous; he, perhaps, hardly ever -uttered a sentence that was not perfectly regular and connected. In this -respect, he not only had the advantage over his own contemporaries, but -perhaps no one that ever lived equalled him in this singular faculty. -But for this, he would always have passed for a common man; and to this -the constant sameness, and, if we may so say, vulgarity of his ideas, -must have contributed not a little, as there was nothing to distract his -mind from this one object of his unintermitted attention; and as, even -in his choice of words, he never aimed at any thing more than a certain -general propriety and stately uniformity of style. His talents were -exactly fitted for the situation in which he was placed; where it was -his business not to overcome others, but to avoid being overcome. He was -able to baffle opposition, not from strength or firmness, but from the -evasive ambiguity and impalpable nature of his resistance, which gave no -hold to the rude grasp of his opponents: no force could bind the loose -phantom, and his mind (though ‘not matchless, and his pride humbled by -such rebuke’) soon rose from defeat unhurt, - - ‘And in its liquid texture, mortal wound - Receiv’d no more than can the fluid air.’ - - - NO. 32.] ON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY [OCT. 9, 1814. - -Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up -false pretences to both. In the latter case, it makes them hypocrites to -themselves as well as others. Religion is, in grosser minds, an enemy to -self-knowledge. The consciousness of the presence of an all-powerful -Being, who is both the witness and judge of every thought, word, and -action, where it does not produce its proper effect, forces the -religious man to practise every mode of deceit upon himself with respect -to his real character and motives; for it is only by being wilfully -blind to his own faults, that he can suppose they will escape the eye of -Omniscience. Consequently, the whole business of a religious man’s life, -if it does not conform to the strict line of his duty, may be said to be -to gloss over his errors to himself, and to invent a thousand shifts and -palliations, in order to hoodwink the Almighty. While he is sensible of -his own delinquency, he knows that it cannot escape the penetration of -his invisible Judge; and the distant penalty annexed to every offence, -though not sufficient to make him desist from the commission of it, will -not suffer him to rest easy, till he has made some compromise with his -own conscience as to his motives for committing it. As far as relates to -this world, a cunning knave may take a pride in the imposition he -practises upon others; and, instead of striving to conceal his true -character from himself, may chuckle with inward satisfaction at the -folly of those who are not wise enough to detect it. ‘But ’tis not so -above.’ This shallow, skin-deep hypocrisy will not serve the turn of the -religious devotee, who is ‘compelled to give in evidence against -himself,’ and who must first become the dupe of his own imposture, -before he can flatter himself with the hope of concealment, as children -hide their eyes with their hands, and fancy that no one can see them. -Religious people often pray very heartily for the forgiveness of a -‘multitude of trespasses and sins,’ as a mark of their humility, but we -never knew them admit any one fault in particular, or acknowledge -themselves in the wrong in any instance whatever. The natural jealousy -of self-love is in them heightened by the fear of damnation, and they -plead _Not Guilty_ to every charge brought against them, with all the -conscious terrors of a criminal at the bar. It is for this reason that -the greatest hypocrites in the world are religious hypocrites. - -This quality, as it has been sometimes found united with the clerical -character, is known by the name of _Priestcraft_. The Ministers of -Religion are perhaps more liable to this vice than any other class of -people. They are obliged to assume a greater degree of sanctity, though -they have it not, and to screw themselves up to an unnatural pitch of -severity and self-denial. They must keep a constant guard over -themselves, have an eye always to their own persons, never relax in -their gravity, nor give the least scope to their inclinations. A single -slip, if discovered, may be fatal to them. Their influence and -superiority depend on their pretensions to virtue and piety; and they -are tempted to draw liberally on the funds of credulity and ignorance -allotted for their convenient support. All this cannot be very friendly -to downright simplicity of character. Besides, they are so accustomed to -inveigh against the vices of others, that they naturally forget that -they have any of their own to correct. They see vice as an object always -out of themselves, with which they have no other concern than to -denounce and stigmatise it. They are only reminded of it _in the third -person_. They as naturally associate sin and its consequences with their -flocks as a pedagogue associates a false concord and flogging with his -scholars. If we may so express it, they serve as conductors to the -lightning of divine indignation, and have only to point the thunders of -the law at others. They identify themselves with that perfect system of -faith and morals, of which they are the professed teachers, and regard -any imputation on their conduct as an indirect attack on the function to -which they belong, or as compromising the authority under which they -act. It is only the head of the Popish church who assumes the title of -_God’s Vicegerent upon Earth_; but the feeling is nearly common to all -the oracular interpreters of the will of Heaven—from the successor of -St. Peter down to the simple, unassuming Quaker, who, disclaiming the -imposing authority of title and office, yet fancies himself the -immediate organ of a preternatural impulse, and affects to speak only as -the spirit moves him. - -There is another way in which the formal profession of religion aids -hypocrisy, by erecting a secret tribunal, to which those who affect a -more than ordinary share of it can (in case of need) appeal from the -judgments of men. The religious impostor, reduced to his last shift, and -having no other way left to avoid the most ‘open and apparent shame,’ -rejects the fallible decisions of the world, and thanks God that there -is one who knows the heart. He is amenable to a higher jurisdiction, and -while all is well with Heaven, he can pity the errors, and smile at the -malice of his enemies! Whatever cuts men off from their dependence on -common opinion or obvious appearances, must open a door to evasion and -cunning, by setting up a standard of right and wrong in every one’s own -breast, of the truth of which nobody can judge but the person himself. -There are some fine instances in the old plays and novels (the best -commentaries on human nature) of the effect of this principle, in giving -the last finishing to the character of duplicity. Miss Harris, in -Fielding’s _Amelia_, is one of the most striking. Molière’s _Tartuffe_ -is another instance of the facility with which religion may be perverted -to the purposes of the most flagrant hypocrisy. It is an impenetrable -fastness, to which this worthy person, like so many others, retires -without the fear of pursuit. It is an additional disguise, in which he -wraps himself up like a cloak. It is a stalking-horse, which is ready on -all occasions,—an invisible conscience, which goes about with him,—his -good genius, that becomes surety for him in all difficulties,—swears to -the purity of his motives,—extricates him out of the most desperate -circumstances,—baffles detection, and furnishes a plea to which there is -no answer. - -The same sort of reasoning will account for the old remark, that persons -who are stigmatised as non-conformists to the established religion, -Jews, Presbyterians, etc., are more disposed to this vice than their -neighbours. They are inured to the contempt of the world, and steeled -against its prejudices: and the same indifference which fortifies them -against the unjust censures of mankind, may be converted, as occasion -requires, into a screen for the most pitiful conduct. They have no -cordial sympathy with others, and, therefore, no sincerity in their -intercourse with them. It is the necessity of concealment, in the first -instance, that produces, and is, in some measure, an excuse for, the -habit of hypocrisy. - -Hypocrisy, as it is connected with cowardice, seems to imply weakness of -body or want of spirit. The impudence and insensibility which belong to -it, ought to suppose robustness of constitution. There is certainly a -very successful and formidable class of sturdy, jolly, able-bodied -hypocrites, the Friar Johns of the profession. Raphael has represented -Elymas the Sorcerer, with a hard iron visage, and large uncouth figure, -made up of bones and muscles; as one not troubled with weak nerves or -idle scruples—as one who repelled all sympathy with others—who was not -to be jostled out of his course by their censures or suspicions—and who -could break with ease through the cobweb snares which he had laid for -the credulity of others, without being once entangled in his own -delusions. His outward form betrays the hard, unimaginative, self-willed -understanding of the sorcerer. - - A. - - - NO. 33.] ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER [OCT. 28, 1813. - -The following remarks are prefixed to the account of Baron Grimm’s -Correspondence in a late number of a celebrated Journal:- - -‘There is nothing more exactly painted in these graphical volumes, than -the character of M. Grimm himself; and the beauty of it is, that, as -there is nothing either natural or peculiar about it, it may stand for -the character of all the wits and philosophers he frequented. He had -more wit, perhaps, and more sound sense and information, than the -greatest part of the society in which he lived; but the leading traits -belong to the whole class, and to all classes, indeed, in similar -situations, in every part of the world. Whenever there is a very large -assemblage of persons who have no other occupation but to amuse -themselves, there will infallibly be generated acuteness of intellect, -refinement of manners, and good taste in conversation; and, with the -same certainty, all profound thought, and all serious affection, will be -discarded from their society. - -‘The multitude of persons and things that force themselves on the -attention in such a scene, and the rapidity with which they succeed each -other, and pass away, prevent any one from making a deep or permanent -impression; and the mind, having never been tasked to any course of -application, and long habituated to this lively succession and variety -of objects, comes at last to require the excitement of perpetual change, -and to find a multiplicity of friends as indispensable as a multiplicity -of amusements. Thus the characteristics of large and polished society -come almost inevitably to be, wit and heartlessness—acuteness and -perpetual derision. The same impatience of uniformity, and passion for -variety, which give so much grace to their conversation, by excluding -all tediousness and pertinacious wrangling, make them incapable of -dwelling for many minutes on the feelings and concerns of any one -individual; while the constant pursuit of little gratifications, and the -weak dread of all uneasy sensations, render them equally averse from -serious sympathy and deep thought. - -‘The whole style and tone of this publication affords the most striking -illustration of these general remarks. From one end of it to the other, -it is a display of the most complete heartlessness, and the most -uninterrupted levity. It chronicles the deaths of half the author’s -acquaintance, and makes jests upon them all; and is much more serious in -discussing the merits of an opera-dancer, than in considering the -evidence for the being of a God, or the first foundations of morality. -Nothing, indeed, can be more just or conclusive than the remark that is -forced from M. Grimm himself, upon the utter carelessness, and instant -oblivion, that followed the death of one of the most distinguished, -active, and amiable members of his coterie: “Tant il est vrai que ce que -nous appelons _la société_, est ce qu’il y a de plus léger, plus ingrat, -et de plus frivole au monde!”’ - -These remarks, though shrewd and sensible in themselves, apply rather to -the character of M. Grimm and his friends as men of the world, after -their initiation into the refined society of Paris and the great world, -than as mere men of letters. There is, however, a character which every -man of letters has before he comes into society, and which he carries -into the world with him, which we shall here attempt to describe. - -The weaknesses and vices that arise from a constant intercourse with -books, are in certain respects the same with those which arise from -daily intercourse with the world; yet each has a character and operation -of its own, which may either counteract or aggravate the tendency of the -other. The same dissipation of mind, the same listlessness, languor, and -indifference, may be produced by both, but they are produced in -different ways, and exhibit very different appearances. The defects of -the literary character proceed, not from frivolity and voluptuous -indolence, but from the overstrained exertion of the faculties, from -abstraction and refinement. A man without talents or education might -mingle in the same society, might give in to all the gaiety and foppery -of the age, might see the same ‘multiplicity of persons and things,’ but -would not become a wit and a philosopher for all that. As far as the -change of actual objects, the real variety and dissipation goes, there -is no difference between M. Grimm and a courtier of Francis I.—between -the consummate philosopher and the giddy girl—between Paris, amidst the -barbaric refinements of the middle of the eighteenth century, and any -other metropolis at any other period. It is in the _ideal_ change of -objects, in the _intellectual_ dissipation of literature and of literary -society, that we are to seek for the difference. The very same languor -and listlessness which, in fashionable life, are owing to the rapid -‘succession of persons and things,’ may be found, and even in a more -intense degree, in the most recluse student, who has no knowledge -whatever of the great world, who has never been present at the sallies -of a _petit souper_, or complimented a lady on presenting her with a -bouquet. It is the province of literature to anticipate the dissipation -of real objects, and to increase it. It creates a fictitious -restlessness and craving after variety, by creating a fictitious world -around us, and by hurrying us, not only through all the mimic scenes of -life, but by plunging us into the endless labyrinths of imagination. -Thus the common indifference produced by the distraction of successive -amusements, is superseded by a general indifference to surrounding -objects, to real persons and things, occasioned by the disparity between -the world of our imagination and that without us. The scenes of real -life are not got up in the same style of magnificence; they want -dramatic illusion and effect. The high-wrought feelings require all the -concomitant and romantic circumstances which fancy can bring together to -satisfy them, and cannot find them in any given object. M. Grimm was -not, by his own account, _born_ a lover; but even supposing him to have -been, in gallantry of temper, a very Amadis, would it have been -necessary that the enthusiasm of a philosopher and a man of genius -should have run the gauntlet of all the _bonnes fortunes_ of Paris to -evaporate into insensibility and indifference? Would not a Clarissa, a -new Eloise, a Cassandra, or a Berenice, have produced the same -mortifying effects on a person of his great critical and acumen and -virtù? Where, O where would he find the rocks of Meillerie in the -precincts of the Palais Royal, or on what lips would Julia’s kisses -grow? Who, after wandering with Angelica, or having seen the heavenly -face of Una, might not meet with impunity a whole circle of literary -ladies? Cowley’s mistresses reigned by turns in the poet’s fancy, and -the beauties of King Charles II. perplex the eye in the preference of -their charms as much now as they ever did. One trifling coquette only -drives out another; but Raphael’s Galatea kills the whole race of -pertness and vulgarity at once. After ranging in dizzy mazes, through -the regions of imaginary beauty, the mind sinks down, breathless and -exhausted, on the earth. In common minds, indifference is produced by -mixing with the world. Authors and artists bring it into the world with -them. The disappointment of the ideal enthusiast is indeed greatest at -first, and he grows reconciled to his situation by degrees; whereas the -mere man of the world becomes more dissatisfied and fastidious, and more -of a misanthrope, the longer he lives. - -It is much the same in friendships founded on literary motives. Literary -men are not attached to the persons of their friends, but to their -minds. They look upon them in the same light as on the books in their -library, and read them till they are tired. In casual acquaintances -friendship grows out of habit. Mutual kindnesses beget mutual -attachment; and numberless little local occurrences in the course of a -long intimacy, furnish agreeable topics of recollection, and are almost -the only sources of conversation among such persons. They have an -immediate pleasure in each other’s company. But in literature nothing of -this kind takes place. Petty and local circumstances are beneath the -dignity of philosophy. Nothing will go down but wit or wisdom. The mind -is kept in a perpetual state of violent exertion and expectation, and as -there cannot always be a fresh supply of stimulus to excite it, as the -same remarks or the same _bon mots_ come to be often repeated, or others -so like them, that we can easily anticipate the effect, and are no -longer surprised into admiration, we begin to relax in the frequency of -our visits, and the heartiness of our welcome. When we are tired of a -book we can lay it down, but we cannot so easily put our friends on the -shelf when we grow weary of their society. The necessity of keeping up -appearances, therefore, adds to the dissatisfaction on both sides, and -at length irritates indifference into contempt. - -By the help of arts and science, everything finds an ideal level. Ideas -assume the place of realities, and realities sink into nothing. Actual -events and objects produce little or no effect on the mind, when it has -been long accustomed to draw its strongest interest from constant -contemplation. It is necessary that it should, as it were, recollect -itself—that it should call out its internal resources, and refine upon -its own feelings—place the object at a distance, and embellish it at -pleasure. By degrees all things are made to serve as hints, and -occasions for the exercise of intellectual activity. It was on this -principle that the sentimental Frenchman left his Mistress, in order -that he might think of her. Cicero ceased to mourn for the loss of his -daughter, when he recollected how fine an opportunity it would afford -him to write an eulogy to her memory; and Mr. Shandy lamented over the -death of Master Bobby much in the same manner. The insensibility of -Authors, etc., to domestic and private calamities has been often carried -to a ludicrous excess, but it is less than it appears to be. The genius -of philosophy is not yet _quite_ understood. For instance, the man who -might seem at the moment undisturbed by the death of a wife or mistress, -would perhaps never walk out on a fine evening as long as he lived, -without recollecting her; and a disappointment in love that ‘heaves no -sigh and sheds no tear,’ may penetrate to the heart, and remain fixed -there ever after. _Hæret lateri lethalis arundo._ The blow is felt only -by reflection, the rebound is fatal. Our feelings become more ideal; the -impression of the moment is less violent, but the effect is more general -and permanent. Those whom we love best, take nearly the same rank in our -estimation as the heroine of a favourite novel! Indeed, after all, -compared with the genuine feelings of nature, ‘clad in flesh and blood,’ -with real passions and affections, conversant about real objects, the -life of a mere man of letters and sentiment appears to be at best but a -living death; a dim twilight existence: a sort of wandering about in an -Elysian fields of our own making; a refined, spiritual, disembodied -state, like that of the ghosts of Homer’s heroes, who, we are told, -would gladly have exchanged situations with the meanest peasant upon -earth![62] - -The moral character of men of letters depends very much upon the same -principles. All actions are seen through that general medium which -reduces them to individual insignificance. Nothing fills or engrosses -the mind—nothing seems of sufficient importance to interfere with our -present inclination. Prejudices, as well as attachments, lose their hold -upon us, and we palter with our duties as we please. Moral obligations, -by being perpetually refined upon, and discussed, lose their force and -efficacy, become mere dry distinctions of the understanding, - - ‘Play round the head, but never reach the heart.’ - -Opposite reasons and consequences balance one another, while appetite or -interest turns the scale. Hence the severe sarcasm of Rousseau, ‘_Tout -homme reflechi est mechant_.’ In fact, it must be confessed, that, as -all things produce their extremes, so excessive refinement tends to -produce equal grossness. The tenuity of our intellectual desires leaves -a void in the mind which requires to be filled up by coarser -gratification, and that of the senses is always at hand. They alone -always retain their strength. There is not a greater mistake than the -common supposition, that intellectual pleasures are capable of endless -repetition, and physical ones not so. The one, indeed, may be spread out -over a greater surface, they may be dwelt upon and kept in mind at will, -and for that very reason they wear out, and pall by comparison, and -require perpetual variety. Whereas the physical gratification only -occupies us at the moment, is, as it were, absorbed in itself, and -forgotten as soon as it is over, and when it returns is _as good as -new_. No one could ever read the same book for any length of time -without being tired of it, but a man is never tired of his meals, -however little variety his table may have to boast. This reasoning is -equally true of all persons who have given much of their time to study -and abstracted speculations. Grossness and sensuality have been marked -with no less triumph in the religious devotee than in the professed -philosopher. The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of -nature; and the good Canon in Gil Blas might be opposed with effect to -some of the portraits in M. Grimm’s Correspondence. - - T. T. - - - NO. 34.] ON COMMON-PLACE CRITICS [NOV. 24, 1816. - - ‘Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive.’ - -We have already given some account of common-place people; we shall in -this number attempt a description of another class of the community, who -may be called (by way of distinction) common-place critics. The former -are a set of people who have no opinions of their own, and do not -pretend to have any; the latter are a set of people who have no opinions -of their own, but who affect to have one upon every subject you can -mention. The former are a very honest, good sort of people, who are -contented to pass for what they are; the latter are a very pragmatical, -troublesome sort of people, who would pass for what they are not, and -try to put off their common-place notions in all companies and on all -subjects, as something of their own. They are of both species, the grave -and the gay; and it is hard to say which is the most tiresome. - -A common-place critic has something to say upon every occasion, and he -always tells you either what is not true, or what you knew before, or -what is not worth knowing. He is a person who thinks by proxy, and talks -by rote. He differs with you, not because he thinks you are in the -wrong, but because he thinks somebody else will think so. Nay, it would -be well if he stopped here; but he will undertake to misrepresent you by -anticipation, lest others should misunderstand you, and will set you -right, not only in opinions which you have, but in those which you may -be supposed to have. Thus, if you say that _Bottom_ the weaver is a -character that has not had justice done to it, he shakes his head, is -afraid you will be thought extravagant, and wonders you should think the -_Midsummer Night’s Dream_ the finest of all Shakspeare’s plays. He -judges of matters of taste and reasoning as he does of dress and -fashion, by the prevailing tone of good company; and you would as soon -persuade him to give up any sentiment that is current there, as to wear -the hind part of his coat before. By the best company, of which he is -perpetually talking, he means persons who live on their own estates, and -other people’s ideas. By the opinion of the world, to which he pays and -expects you to pay great deference, he means that of a little circle of -his own, where he hears and is heard. Again, _good sense_ is a phrase -constantly in his mouth, by which he does not mean his own sense or that -of anybody else, but the opinions of a number of persons who have agreed -to take their opinions on trust from others. If any one observes that -there is something better than common sense, viz., _uncommon_ sense, he -thinks this a bad joke. If you object to the opinions of the majority, -as often arising from ignorance or prejudice, he appeals from them to -the sensible and well-informed; and if you say there may be other -persons as sensible and well informed as himself and his friends, he -smiles at your presumption. If you attempt to prove anything to him, it -is in vain, for he is not thinking of what you say, but of what will be -thought of it. The stronger your reasons, the more incorrigible he -thinks you; and he looks upon any attempt to expose his gratuitous -assumptions as the wandering of a disordered imagination. His notions -are like plaster figures cast in a mould, as brittle as they are hollow; -but they will break before you can make them give way. In fact, he is -the representative of a large part of the community, the shallow, the -vain, and indolent, of those who have time to talk, and are not bound to -think: and he considers any deviation from the select forms of -common-place, or the accredited language of conventional impertinence, -as compromising the authority under which he acts in his diplomatic -capacity. It is wonderful how this class of people agree with one -another; how they herd together in all their opinions; what a tact they -have for folly; what an instinct for absurdity; what a sympathy in -sentiment; how they find one another out by infallible signs, like -Freemasons! The secret of this unanimity and strict accord is, that not -any one of them ever admits any opinion that can cost the least effort -of mind in arriving at, or of courage in declaring it. Folly is as -consistent with itself as wisdom: there is a certain level of thought -and sentiment, which the weakest minds, as well as the strongest, find -out as best adapted to them; and you as regularly come to the same -conclusions, by looking no farther than the surface, as if you dug to -the centre of the earth! You know beforehand what a critic of this class -will say on almost every subject the first time he sees you, the next -time, the time after that, and so on to the end of the chapter. The -following list of his opinions may be relied on:—It is pretty certain -that before you have been in the room with him ten minutes, he will give -you to understand that Shakspeare was a great but irregular genius. -Again, he thinks it a question whether any one of his plays, if brought -out now for the first time, would succeed. He thinks that _Macbeth_ -would be the most likely, from the music which has been since introduced -into it. He has some doubts as to the superiority of the French School -over us in tragedy, and observes, that Hume and Adam Smith were both of -that opinion. He thinks Milton’s pedantry a great blemish in his -writings, and that _Paradise Lost_ has many prosaic passages in it. He -conceives that genius does not always imply taste, and that wit and -judgment are very different faculties. He considers Dr. Johnson as a -great critic and moralist, and that his Dictionary was a work of -prodigious erudition and vast industry; but that some of the anecdotes -of him in Boswell are trifling. He conceives that Mr. Locke was a very -original and profound thinker. He thinks Gibbon’s style vigorous but -florid. He wonders that the author of _Junius_ was never found out. He -thinks Pope’s translation of the _Iliad_ an improvement on the -simplicity of the original, which was necessary to fit it to the taste -of modern readers. He thinks there is a great deal of grossness in the -old comedies; and that there has been a great improvement in the morals -of the higher classes since the reign of Charles II. He thinks the reign -of Queen Anne the golden period of our literature, but that, upon the -whole, we have no English writer equal to Voltaire. He speaks of -Boccacio as a very licentious writer, and thinks the wit in Rabelais -quite extravagant, though he never read either of them. He cannot get -through Spenser’s _Fairy Queen_, and pronounces all allegorical poetry -tedious. He prefers Smollett to Fielding, and discovers more knowledge -of the world in _Gil Blas_ than in _Don Quixote_. Richardson he thinks -very minute and tedious. He thinks the French Revolution has done a -great deal of harm to the cause of liberty; and blames Buonaparte for -being so ambitious. He reads the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, -and thinks as they do. He is shy of having an opinion on a new actor or -a new singer; for the public do not always agree with the newspapers. He -thinks that the moderns have great advantages over the ancients in many -respects. He thinks Jeremy Bentham a greater man than Aristotle. He can -see no reason why artists of the present day should not paint as well as -Raphael or Titian. For instance, he thinks there is something very -elegant and classical in Mr. Westall’s drawings. He has no doubt that -Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Lectures were written by Burke. He considers Horne -Tooke’s account of the conjunction _That_ very ingenious, and holds that -no writer can be called elegant who uses the present for the subjunctive -mood, who says _If it is_ for _If it be_. He thinks Hogarth a great -master of low, comic humour; and Cobbett a coarse, vulgar writer. He -often talks of men of liberal education, and men without education, as -if that made much difference. He judges of people by their pretensions; -and pays attention to their opinions according to their dress and rank -in life. If he meets with a fool, he does not find him out; and if he -meets with any one wiser than himself, he does not know what to make of -him. He thinks that manners are of great consequence to the common -intercourse of life. He thinks it difficult to prove the existence of -any such thing as original genius, or to fix a general standard of -taste. He does not think it possible to define what wit is. In religion, -his opinions are liberal. He considers all enthusiasm as a degree of -madness, particularly to be guarded against by young minds; and believes -that truth lies in the middle, between the extremes of right and wrong. -He thinks that the object of poetry is to please; and that astronomy is -a very pleasing and useful study. He thinks all this, and a great deal -more, that amounts to nothing. We wonder we have remembered one half of -it— - - ‘For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.’ - -Though he has an aversion to all new ideas, he likes all new plans and -matters-of-fact: the new Schools for All, the Penitentiary, the new -Bedlam, the new Steam-Boats, the Gas-Lights, the new Patent Blacking; -every thing of that sort but the Bible Society. The Society for the -Suppression of Vice he thinks a great nuisance, as every honest man -must. - -In a word, a common-place critic is the pedant of polite conversation. -He refers to the opinion of Lord M. or Lady G. with the same air of -significance that the learned pedant does to the authority of Cicero or -Virgil; retails the wisdom of the day, as the anecdote-monger does the -wit; and carries about with him the sentiments of people of a certain -respectability in life, as the dancing-master does their air, or their -valets their clothes. - - Z. - - - NO. 35.] ON THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE [NOV. 10, 1816. - BRITISH INSTITUTION - -The Catalogue Raisonné of the pictures lately exhibited at the British -Institution is worthy of notice, both as it is understood to be a -declaration of the views of the Royal Academy, and as it contains some -erroneous notions with respect to art prevalent in this country. It sets -out with the following passages:— - -‘The first resolution ever framed by the noblemen and gentlemen who met -to establish the British Institution, consists of the following -sentence, viz.: - -‘“The _object_ of the establishment is to facilitate, by a Public -Exhibition, the _Sale_ of the productions of _British_ artists.” - -‘Now, if the Directors had not felt quite certain as to the result of -the present Exhibition, (of the Flemish School), if they had not -perfectly satisfied themselves, that, instead of affording any, even the -least means of promoting _unfair and invidious comparisons, it would -produce abundant matter for exaltation to the living Artist_, can we -possibly imagine they, the foster-parents of British Art, would ever -have suffered such a display to have taken place? Certainly not. If they -had not foreseen and fully provided against _all such injurious -results_, by the deep and masterly manœuvre alluded to in our former -remarks, is it conceivable that the Directors would have acted in a way -so counter, so diametrically in opposition to this their fundamental and -leading principle? No, No! It is a position which all sense of respect -for their consistency will not suffer us to admit, which all feelings of -respect for their views forbid us to allow. - -‘Is it at all to be wondered at, that, in an Exhibition such as this, -where nothing _like a patriotic desire_ to uphold the arts of their -country can possibly have place in the minds of the Directors, we should -attribute to them the desire of _holding up the old Masters to -derision_, inasmuch as good policy would allow? Is it to be wondered at, -that, when the Directors have the three-fold prospect, by so doing, of -estranging the silly and ignorant Collector from his false and senseless -infatuation for the _Black Masters_, of turning his _unjust preference_ -from Foreign to British Art, and, by affording the living painters a -just encouragement, teach them to feel that becoming confidence in their -powers, which an acknowledgment of their merits entitles them to? Is it -to be wondered at, we say, that a little duplicity should have been -practised upon this occasion, that some of our ill-advised Collectors -and second-rate picture Amateurs should have been singled out as sheep -for the sacrifice, and _thus ingeniously_ made to pay unwilling homage -_to the talents of their countrymen_, through that very medium by which -they had previously been induced _to depreciate them_?’—‘If, in our wish -to please the Directors, we should, without mercy, damn all that -deserves damning, and effectually hide our admiration for those pieces -and passages which are truly entitled to admiration, it must be placed -entirely to that _patriotic sympathy_, which we feel in common with the -Directors, of holding up to the public, as the first and great object, -THE PATRONAGE OF MODERN ART.’ - -Once more: - -‘Who does not perceive (except those whose eyes are not made for seeing -more than they are told by others) that Vandyke’s portraits, by the -brilliant colour of the velvet hangings, are made to look as if they had -been newly fetched home from the clear-starcher, with a double portion -of blue in their ruffs? Who does not see, that the angelic females in -Rubens’s pictures (particularly in that of the Brazen Serpent) labour -under a fit of the bile, twice as severe as they would do, if they were -not suffering on red velvet? Who does not see, from the same cause, that -the landscapes by the same Master are converted into _brown studies_, -and that Rembrandt’s ladies and gentlemen of fashion look as if they had -been on duty for the whole of last week in the Prince Regent’s new -sewer? _And who, that has any penetration, that has any gratitude, does -not see, in seeing all this, the anxious and benevolent solicitude of -the Directors to keep the old masters under?_’ - -So, then, this Writer would think it a matter of lively gratitude, and -of exultation in the breasts of living Artists, if the Directors, ‘in -their anxious and benevolent desire to keep the old Masters under,’ had -contrived to make Vandyke’s pictures look like starch and blue: if they -had converted Rubens’s pictures into brown studies, or a fit of the -bile; or had dragged Rembrandt’s through the Prince Regent’s new sewers. -It would have been a great gain, a great triumph to the Academy and to -the Art, to have nothing left of all the pleasure or admiration which -those painters had hitherto imparted to the world, to find all the -excellences which their works had been supposed to possess, and all -respect for them in the minds of the public destroyed, and converted -into sudden loathing and disgust. This is, according to the -Catalogue-writer and his friends, a consummation devoutly to be wished -for themselves and for the Art. All that is taken from the old Masters -is so much added to the moderns; the marring of Art is the making of the -Academy. This is the kind of patronage and promotion of the Fine Arts on -which he insists as necessary to keep up the reputation of living -Artists, and to ensure the sale of their works. There is nothing then in -common between the merits of the old Masters and the doubtful claims of -the new: _those_ are not ‘the scale by which we can ascend to the love’ -of these. The excellences of the latter are of their own making and of -their own seeing; we must take their own word for them; and not only so, -but we must sacrifice all established principles and all established -reputation to their upstart pretensions, because, if the old pictures -are not totally worthless, their own can be good for nothing. The only -chance, therefore, for the moderns, if the Catalogue-writer is to be -believed, is to decry all the _chef-d’œuvres_ of the Art, and to hold up -all the great names in it to derision. If the public once get to relish -the style of the old Masters, they will no longer tolerate theirs. But -so long as the old Masters can be _kept under_, the coloured caricatures -of the moderns, like _Mrs. Peachum’s_ coloured handkerchiefs, ‘will be -of sure sale at their warehouse at Redriff.’ The Catalogue-writer thinks -it necessary, in order to raise the Art in this country, to depreciate -all Art in all other times and countries. He thinks that the way to -excite an enthusiastic admiration of genius in the public is by setting -the example of a vulgar and malignant hatred of it in himself. He thinks -to inspire a lofty spirit of emulation in the rising generation, by -shutting his eyes to the excellences of all the finest models, or by -pouring out upon them the overflowings of his gall and envy, to -disfigure them in the eyes of others; so that they may see nothing in -Raphael, in Titian, in Rubens, in Rembrandt, in Vandyke, in Claude -Lorraine, in Leonardo da Vinci, but the low wit and dirty imagination of -a paltry scribbler; and come away from the greatest monuments of human -capacity, without one feeling of excellence in art, or of beauty or -grandeur in nature. Nay, he would persuade us that this is a great -public and private benefit, _viz._, that there is no such thing as -excellence, as genius, as true fame, except what he and his anonymous -associates arrogate to themselves, with all the profit and credit of -this degradation of genius, this ruin of Art, this obloquy and contempt -heaped on great and unrivalled reputation. He thinks it a likely mode of -producing confidence in the existence and value of Art, to prove that -there never was any such thing, till the last annual Exhibition of the -Royal Academy. He would encourage a disinterested love of Art, and a -liberal patronage of it in the great and opulent, by shewing that the -living Artists have no regard, but the most sovereign and reckless -contempt for it, except as it can be made a temporary stalking-horse to -their pride and avarice. The writer may have a _patriotic sympathy_ with -the sale of modern works of Art, but we do not see what sympathy there -can be between the buyers and sellers of these works, except in the love -of the Art itself. When we find that these patriotic persons would -destroy the Art itself to promote the sale of their pictures, we know -what to say to them. We are obliged to the zeal of our critic for having -set this matter in so clear a light. The public will feel little -sympathy with a body of Artists who disclaim all sympathy with all other -Artists. They will doubt their pretensions to genius who have no feeling -of respect for it in others; they will consider them as bastards, not -children of the Art, who would destroy their parent. The public will -hardly consent, when the proposition is put to them in this tangible -shape, to give up the cause of liberal art and of every liberal -sentiment connected with it, and enter, with their eyes open, into a -pettifogging cabal to keep the old Masters under, or hold their names up -to derision ‘as good sport,’ merely to gratify the selfish importunity -of a gang of sturdy beggars, who demand public encouragement and -support, with a claim of settlement in one hand, and a forged -certificate of merit in the other. They can only deserve well of the -public by deserving well of the Art. Have we taken these men from the -plough, from the counter, from the shop-board, from the tap-room and the -stable-door, to raise them to fortune, to rank, and distinction in life, -for the sake of Art, to give them a chance of doing something in Art -like what had been done before them, of promoting and refining the -public taste, of setting before them the great models of Art, and by a -pure love of truth and beauty, and by patient and disinterested -aspirations after it, of rising to the highest excellence, and of making -themselves ‘a name great above all names’; and do they now turn round -upon us, and because they have neglected these high objects of their -true calling for pitiful cabals and filling their pockets, insist that -we shall league with them in crushing the progress of Art, and the -respect attached to all its great efforts? There is no other country in -the world in which such a piece of impudent quackery could be put -forward with impunity, and still less in which it could be put forward -in the garb of patriotism. This is the effect of our gross island -manners. The Catalogue-writer carries his bear-garden notions of this -virtue into the Fine Arts, and would set about destroying Dutch or -Italian pictures as he would Dutch shipping or Italian liberty. He goes -up to the Rembrandts with the same swaggering Jack-tar airs as he would -to a battery of nine-pounders, and snaps his fingers at Raphael as he -would at the French. Yet he talks big about the Elgin Marbles, because -Mr. Payne Knight has made a slip on that subject; though, to be -consistent, he ought to be for pounding them in a mortar, should get his -friend the Incendiary to set fire to the room building for them at the -British Museum, or should get Mr. Soane to build it. Patriotism and the -Fine Arts have nothing to do with one another—because patriotism relates -to exclusive advantages, and the advantages of the Fine Arts are not -exclusive, but communicable. The physical property of one country cannot -be shared without loss by another: the physical force of one country may -destroy that of another. These, therefore, are objects of national -jealousy and fear of encroachment: for the interests or rights of -different countries may be compromised in them. But it is not so in the -Fine Arts, which depend upon taste and knowledge. We do not consume the -works of Art as articles of food, of clothing, or fuel; but we brood -over their _idea_, which is accessible to all, and may be multiplied -without end, ‘with riches fineless.’ Patriotism is ‘beastly; subtle as -the fox for prey; like warlike as the wolf for what it eats’; but Art is -ideal, and therefore liberal. The knowledge or perfection of Art in one -age or country is the cause of its existence or perfection in another. -Art is the cause of art in other men. Works of genius done by a Dutchman -are the cause of genius in an Englishman—are the cause of taste in an -Englishman. The patronage of foreign Art is, not to prevent, but to -promote Art in England. It does not prevent, but promote taste in -England. Art subsists by communication, not by exclusion. The light of -art, like that of nature, shines on all alike; and its benefit, like -that of the sun, is in being seen and felt. The spirit of art is not the -spirit of trade: it is not a question between the grower or consumer of -some perishable and personal commodity: but it is a question between -human genius and human taste, how much the one can produce for the -benefit of mankind, and how much the other can enjoy. It is ‘the link of -peaceful commerce ‘twixt dividable shores.’ To take from it this -character is to take from it its best privilege, its humanity. Would any -one, except our Catalogue-virtuoso, think of destroying or concealing -the monuments of Art in past ages, as inconsistent with the progress of -taste and civilisation in the present? Would any one find fault with the -introduction of the works of Raphael into this country, as if their -being done by an Italian confined the benefit to a foreign country, when -all the benefit, all the great and lasting benefit, (except the -purchase-money, the lasting burden of the Catalogue, and the great test -of the value of Art in the opinion of the writer), is instantly -communicated to all eyes that behold, and all hearts that can feel them? -It is many years ago since we first saw the prints of the Cartoons hung -round the parlour of a little inn on the great north road. We were then -very young, and had not been initiated into the principles of taste and -refinement of the _Catalogue Raisonné_. We had heard of the fame of the -Cartoons, but this was the first time that we had ever been admitted -face to face into the presence of those divine works. ‘How were we then -uplifted!’ Prophets and Apostles stood before us, and the Saviour of the -Christian world, with his attributes of faith and power; miracles were -working on the walls; the hand of Raphael was there, and as his pencil -traced the lines, we saw god-like spirits and lofty shapes descend and -walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still lifted them above -the earth. There was that figure of St. Paul, pointing with noble -fervour to ‘temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ and -that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole figure seems sustained -by meekness and love, and that of the same person, surrounded by the -disciples, like a flock of sheep listening to the music of some divine -shepherd. We knew not how enough to admire them. If from this transport -and delight there arose in our breasts a wish, a deep aspiration of -mingled hope and fear, to be able one day to do something like them, -that hope has long since vanished; but not with it the love of Art, nor -delight in works of Art, nor admiration of the genius which produces -them, nor respect for fame which rewards and crowns them! Did we suspect -that in this feeling of enthusiasm for the works of Raphael we were -deficient in patriotic sympathy, or that, in spreading it as far as we -could, we did an injury to our country or to living Art? The very -feeling shewed that there was no such distinction in Art, that her -benefits were common, that the power of genius, like the spirit of the -world, is everywhere alike present. And would the harpies of criticism -try to extinguish this common benefit to their country from a pretended -exclusive attachment to their countrymen? Would they rob their country -of Raphael to set up the credit of their professional little-goes and E. -O. tables—‘cutpurses of the Art, that from the shelf the precious diadem -stole, and put it in their pockets’? Tired of exposing such folly, we -walked out the other day, and saw a bright cloud resting on the bosom of -the blue expanse, which reminded us of what we had seen in some picture -in the Louvre. We were suddenly roused from our reverie, by recollecting -that till we had answered this catchpenny publication we had no right, -without being liable to a charge of disaffection to our country or -treachery to the Art, to look at nature, or to think of any thing like -it in Art, not of British growth and manufacture! - - - NO. 36.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [NOV. 10, 17, - 1816. - -The Catalogue-writer nicknames the Flemish painters ‘the Black Masters.’ -Either this means that the works of Rubens and Vandyke were originally -black pictures, that is, deeply shadowed like those of Rembrandt, which -is false, there being no painter who used so little shadow as Vandyke, -or so much colour as Rubens; or it must mean that their pictures have -turned darker with time, that is, that the art itself is a black art. Is -this a triumph for the Academy? Is the defect and decay of Art a subject -of exultation to the national genius? Then there is no hope (in this -country at least) ‘that a great man’s memory may outlive him half a -year!’ Do they calculate that the decomposition and gradual -disappearance of the standard works of Art will quicken the demand, and -facilitate the sale of modern pictures? Have they no hope of immortality -themselves, that they are glad to see the inevitable dissolution of all -that has long flourished in splendour and in honour? They are pleased to -find, that at the end of near two hundred years, the pictures of Vandyke -and Rubens have suffered half as much from time as those of their late -President have done in thirty or forty, or their own in the last ten or -twelve years. So that the glory of painting is that it does not last for -ever: it is this which puts the ancients and the moderns on a level. -They hail with undisguised satisfaction the approaches of the slow -mouldering hand of time in those works which have lasted longest, not -anticipating the premature fate of their own. Such is their -short-sighted ambition. A picture is with them like the frame it is in, -_as good as new_; and the best picture, that which was last painted. -They make the weak side of Art the test of its excellence; and though a -modern picture of two years standing is hardly fit to be seen, from the -general ignorance of the painter in the mechanical as well as other -parts of the Art, yet they are sure at any time to get the start of -Rubens or Vandyke, by painting a picture against the day of exhibition. -We even question whether they would wish to make their own pictures last -if they could, and whether they would not destroy their own works as -well as those of others, (like chalk figures on the floors), to have new -ones bespoke the next day. The Flemish pictures then, except those of -Rembrandt, were not originally black; they have not faded in proportion -to the length of time they have been painted. All that comes then of the -nickname in the Catalogue is, that the pictures of the old Masters have -lasted longer than those of the present members of the Royal Academy, -and that the latter, it is to be presumed, do not wish their works to -last so long, lest they should be called the _Black Masters_. With -respect to Rembrandt, this epitaph may be literally true. But, we would -ask, whether the style of _chiaroscuro_, in which Rembrandt painted, is -not one fine view of nature and of art? Whether any other painter -carried it to the same height of perfection as he did? Whether any other -painter ever joined the same depth of shadow with the same clearness? -Whether his tones were not as fine as they were true? Whether a more -thorough master of his art ever lived? Whether he deserved for this to -be nicknamed by the Writer of the Catalogue, or to have his works ‘kept -under, or himself held up to derision,’ by the Patrons and Directors of -the British Institution for the support and encouragement of the Fine -Arts? - -But we have heard it said by a disciple and commentator on the -Catalogue, (one would think it was hardly possible to descend lower than -the writer himself), that the Directors of the British Institution -assume a consequence to themselves, hostile to the pretensions of modern -professors, out of the reputation of the old Masters, whom they affect -to look upon with wonder, to worship as something preternatural;—that -they consider the bare possession of an old picture as a title to -distinction, and the respect paid to Art as the highest pretension of -the owner. And is this then a subject of complaint with the Academy, -that genius is thus thought of, when its claims are once fully -established? That those high qualities, which are beyond the estimate of -ignorance and selfishness while living, receive their reward from -distant ages? Do they not ‘feel the future in the instant’? Do they not -know, that those qualities which appeal neither to interest nor passion -can only find their level with time, and would they annihilate the only -pretensions they have? Or have they no conscious affinity with true -genius, no claim to the reversion of true fame, no right of succession -to this lasting inheritance and final reward of great exertions, which -they would therefore destroy, to prevent others from enjoying it? Does -all their ambition begin and end in their _patriotic sympathy_ with the -sale of modern works of Art, and have they no fellow-feeling with the -hopes and final destiny of human genius? What poet ever complained of -the respect paid to Homer as derogatory to himself? The envy and -opposition to established fame is peculiar to the race of modern -Artists; and it is to be hoped it will remain so. It is the fault of -their education. It is only by a liberal education that we learn to feel -respect for the past, or to take an interest in the future. The -knowledge of Artists is too often confined to their art, and their views -to their own interest. Even in this they are wrong:—in all respects they -are wrong. As a mere matter of trade, the prejudice in favour of old -pictures does not prevent but assist the sale of modern works of Art. If -there was not a prejudice in favour of old pictures, there could be a -prejudice in favour of none, and none would be sold. The professors seem -to think, that for every old picture not sold, one of their own would -be. This is a false calculation. The contrary is true. For every old -picture not sold, one of their own (in proportion) would _not_ be sold. -The practice of buying pictures is a habit, and it must begin with those -pictures which have a character and name, and not with those which have -none. ‘Depend upon it,’ says Mr. Burke in a letter to Barry, ‘whatever -attracts public attention to the Arts, will in the end be for the -benefit of the Artists themselves.’ Again, do not the Academicians know, -that it is a contradiction in terms, that a man should enjoy the -advantages of posthumous fame in his lifetime? Most men cease to be of -any consequence at all when they are dead; but it is the privilege of -the man of genius to survive himself. But he cannot in the nature of -things anticipate this privilege—because in all that appeals to the -general intellect of mankind, this appeal is strengthened, as it spreads -wider and is acknowledged; because a man cannot unite in himself -personally the suffrages of distant ages and nations; because -popularity, a newspaper puff, cannot have the certainty of lasting fame; -because it does not carry the same weight of sympathy with it; because -it cannot have the same interest, the same refinement or grandeur. If -Mr. West was equal to Raphael, (which he is not), if Mr. Lawrence was -equal to Vandyke or Titian, (which he is not), if Mr. Turner was equal -to Claude Lorraine, (which he is not), if Mr. Wilkie was equal to -Teniers, (which he is not), yet they could not, nor ought they to be -thought of in the same manner, because there could not be the same proof -of it, nor the same confidence in the opinion of a man and his friends, -or of any one generation, as in that of successive generations and the -voice of posterity. If it is said that we pass over the faults of the -one, and severely scrutinise the excellences of the other; this is also -right and necessary, because the one have passed their trial, and the -others are upon it. If we forgive or overlook the faults of the -ancients, it is because they have dearly earned it at our hands. We -ought to have some objects to indulge our enthusiasm upon; and we ought -to indulge it upon the highest, and those that are surest of deserving -it. Would one of our Academicians expect us to look at his new house in -one of the new squares with the same veneration as at Michael Angelo’s, -which he built with his own hands, as at Tully’s villa, or at the tomb -of Virgil? We have no doubt they would, but we cannot. Besides, if it -were possible to transfer our old prejudices to new candidates, the way -to effect this is not by destroying them. If we have no confidence in -all that has gone before us, in what has received the sanction of time -and the concurring testimony of disinterested judges, are we to believe -all of a sudden that excellence has started up in our own times, because -it never existed before: are we to take the Artists’ own word for their -superiority to their predecessors? There is one other plea made by the -moderns, ‘that they must live,’ and the answer to it is, that they do -live. An Academician makes his thousand a-year by portrait-painting, and -complains that the encouragement given to foreign Art deprives him of -the means of subsistence, and prevents him from indulging his genius in -works of high history,—‘playing at will his virgin fancies wild.’ - -As to the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns, it does -not admit of a question. The odds are too much in favour of the former, -because it is likely that more good pictures were painted in the last -three hundred than in the last thirty years. Now, the old pictures are -the best remaining out of all that period, setting aside those of living -Artists. If they are bad, the Art itself is good for nothing; for they -are the best that ever were. They are not good, because they are old; -but they have become old, because they are good. The question is not -between this and any other generation, but between the present and all -preceding generations, whom the Catalogue-writer, in his misguided zeal, -undertakes to vilify and ‘to keep under, or hold up to derision.’ To say -that the great names which have come down to us are not worth any thing, -is to say that the mountain-tops which we see in the farthest horizon -are not so high as the intervening objects. If there had been any -greater painters than Vandyke or Rubens, or Raphael or Rembrandt, or N. -Poussin or Claude Lorraine, we should have heard of them, we should have -seen them in the Gallery, and we should have read a patriotic and -disinterested account of them in the _Catalogue Raisonné_. Waiving the -unfair and invidious comparison between all former excellence and the -concentrated essence of it in the present age, let us ask who, in the -last generation of painters, was equal to the old masters? Was it -Highmore, or Hayman, or Hudson, or Kneller? Who was the English Raphael, -or Rubens, or Vandyke, of that day, to whom the Catalogue-critic would -have extended his patriotic sympathy and damning patronage? Kneller, we -have been told, was thought superior to Vandyke by the persons of -fashion whom he painted. So St. Thomas Apostle seems higher than St. -Paul’s while you are close under it; but the farther off you go the -higher the mighty dome aspires into the skies. What is become of all -those great men who flourished in our own time—‘like flowers in men’s -caps, dying or ere they sicken’—Hoppner, Opie, Shee, Loutherbourg, -Rigaud, Romney, Barry, the painters of the Shakspeare Gallery? ‘Gone to -the vault of all the Capulets,’ and their pictures with them, or before -them! Shall we put more faith in their successors? Shall we take the -words of their friends for their taste and genius? No, we will stick to -what we know will stick to us, the ‘heirlooms’ of the Art, the Black -Masters. The picture, for instance, of Charles I. on horseback, which -our critic criticises with such heavy drollery, is worth all the -pictures that were ever exhibited at the Royal Academy (from the time of -Sir Joshua to the present time inclusive) put together. It shews more -knowledge and feeling of the Art, more skill and beauty, more sense of -what it is in objects that gives pleasure to the eye, with more power to -communicate this pleasure to the world. If either this single picture, -or all the lumber that has ever appeared at the Academy, were to be -destroyed, there could not be a question which, with any Artist or with -any judge or lover of Art. So stands the account between ancient and -modern Art! By this we may judge of all the rest. The Catalogue-writer -makes some strictures in the second part on the Waterloo Exhibition, -which he does not think what it ought to be. We wonder he had another -word to say on modern Art after seeing it. He should instantly have -taken the resolution of _Iago_, ‘From this time forth I never will speak -more.’ - -The writer of the _Catalogue Raisonné_ has fallen foul of two things -which ought to be sacred to Artists and lovers of Art—Genius and Fame. -If they are not sacred to them, we do not know to whom they will be -sacred. A work such as the present shews that the person who could write -it must either have no knowledge or taste for Art, or must be actuated -by a feeling of unaccountable malignity towards it. It shews that any -body of men by whom it could be set on foot or encouraged are not an -Academy of Art. It shews that a country in which such a publication -could make its appearance is not the country of the Fine Arts. Does the -writer think to prove the genius of his countrymen for Art by -proclaiming their utter insensibility and flagitious contempt for all -beauty and excellence in the art, except in their own works? No! it is -very true that the English are a shopkeeping nation; and the _Catalogue -Raisonné_ is the proof of it. - -Finally, the works of the moderns are not, like those of the Old -Masters, a second nature. Oh Art, true likeness of nature, ‘balm of hurt -minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast,’ -of what would our Catalogue-mongers deprive us in depriving us of thee -and of thy glories, of the lasting works of the great Painters, and of -their names no less magnificent, grateful to our hearts as the sound of -celestial harmony from other spheres, waking around us (whether heard or -not) from youth to age, the stay, the guide and anchor of our purest -thoughts; whom, having once seen, we always remember, and who teach us -to see all things through them; without whom life would be to begin -again, and the earth barren; of Raphael, who lifted the human form half -way to heaven; of Titian, who painted the mind in the face, and unfolded -the soul of things to the eye; of Rubens, around whose pencil gorgeous -shapes thronged numberless, startling us by the novel accidents of form -and colour, putting the spirit of motion into the universe, and weaving -a gay fantastic round and Bacchanalian dance with nature; of thee, too, -Rembrandt, who didst redeem one half of nature from obloquy, from the -nickname in the Catalogue, ‘smoothing the raven down of darkness till it -smiled,’ and tinging it with a light like streaks of burnished ore; of -these, and more, of whom the world is scarce worthy; and what would they -give us in return? Nothing. - - W. H. - - - NO. 37.] ON POETICAL VERSATILITY [DEC. 22, 1816. - -The spirit of poetry is in itself favourable to humanity and liberty: -but, we suspect, not when its aid is most wanted. The spirit of poetry -is not the spirit of mortification or of martyrdom. Poetry dwells in a -perpetual Utopia of its own, and is for that reason very ill calculated -to make a Paradise upon earth, by encountering the shocks and -disappointments of the world. Poetry, like law, is a fiction, only a -more agreeable one. It does not create difficulties where they do not -exist; but contrives to get rid of them, whether they exist or not. It -is not entangled in cobwebs of its own making, but soars above all -obstacles. It cannot be ‘constrained by mastery.’ It has the range of -the universe; it traverses the empyrean, and looks down on nature from a -higher sphere. When it lights upon the earth, it loses some of its -dignity and its use. Its strength is in its wings; its element the air. -Standing on its feet, jostling with the crowd, it is liable to be -overthrown, trampled on, and defaced; for its wings are of a dazzling -brightness, ‘heaven’s own tinct,’ and the least soil upon them shews to -disadvantage. Sullied, degraded as we have seen it, we shall not insult -over it, but leave it to Time to take out the stains, seeing it is a -thing immortal as itself. ‘Being so majestical, we should do it wrong to -offer it the show of violence.’ But the best things, in their abuse, -often become the worst; and so it is with poetry when it is diverted -from its proper end. Poets live in an ideal world, where they make -everything out according to their wishes and fancies. They either find -things delightful or make them so. They feign the beautiful and grand -out of their own minds, and imagine all things to be, not what they are, -but what they ought to be. They are naturally inventors, creators of -truth, of love, and beauty: and while they speak to us from the sacred -shrine of their own hearts, while they pour out the pure treasures of -thought to the world, they cannot be too much admired and applauded: but -when, forgetting their high calling, and becoming tools and puppets in -the hands of power, they would pass off the gewgaws of corruption and -love-tokens of self-interest as the gifts of the Muse, they cannot be -too much despised and shunned. We do not like novels founded on facts, -nor do we like poets turned courtiers. Poets, it has been said, succeed -best in fiction: and they should for the most part stick to it. -Invention, not upon an imaginary subject, is a lie: the varnishing over -the vices or deformities of actual objects is hypocrisy. Players leave -their finery at the stage-door, or they would be hooted; poets come out -into the world with all their bravery on, and yet they would pass for -_bona fide_ persons. They lend the colours of fancy to whatever they -see: whatever they touch becomes gold, though it were lead. With them -every Joan is a lady; and kings and queens are human. Matters of fact -they embellish at their will, and reason is the plaything of their -passions, their caprice, or their interest. There is no practice so base -of which they will not become the panders: no sophistry of which their -understanding may not be made the voluntary dupe. Their only object is -to please their fancy. Their souls are effeminate, half man and half -woman:—they want fortitude, and are without principle. If things do not -turn out according to their wishes, they will make their wishes turn -round to things. They can easily overlook whatever they do not like, and -make an idol of any thing they please. The object of poetry is to -please: this art naturally gives pleasure, and excites admiration. -Poets, therefore, cannot do well without sympathy and flattery. It is -accordingly very much against the grain that they remain long on the -unpopular side of the question. They do not like to be shut out when -laurels are to be given away at Court—or places under Government to be -disposed of, in romantic situations in the country. They are happy to be -reconciled on the first opportunity to prince and people, and to -exchange their principles for a pension. They have not always strength -of mind to think for themselves, nor courage enough to bear the unjust -stigma of the opinions they have taken upon trust from others. Truth -alone does not satisfy their pampered appetites without the sauce of -praise. To prefer truth to all other things, it requires that the mind -should have been at some pains in finding it out, and that we should -feel a severe delight in the contemplation of truth, seen by its own -clear light, and not as it is reflected in the admiring eyes of the -world. A philosopher may perhaps make a shift to be contented with the -sober draughts of reason: a poet must have the applause of the world to -intoxicate him. Milton was, however, a poet, and an honest man; he was -Cromwell’s secretary. - - T. T. - - - NO. 38.] ON ACTORS AND ACTING [JAN. 5, 1817. - -Players are ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time’; the motley -representatives of human nature. They are the only honest hypocrites. -Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness. The height of their -ambition is to be _beside themselves_. To-day kings, to-morrow beggars, -it is only when they are themselves, that they are nothing. Made up of -mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the -prompter’s call, they wear the livery of other men’s fortunes; their -very thoughts are not their own. They are, as it were, train-bearers in -the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than -itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they shew us all that -we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. The stage -is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, with the dull part left -out: and, indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold -all the rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as _they_ -imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. How many fine gentlemen do we -owe to the stage? How many romantic lovers are mere Romeos in -masquerade? How many soft bosoms have heaved with Juliet’s sighs? They -teach us when to laugh and when to weep, when to love and when to hate, -upon principle and with a good grace! Wherever there is a play-house, -the world will go on not amiss. The stage not only refines the manners, -but it is the best teacher of morals, for it is the truest and most -intelligible picture of life. It stamps the image of virtue on the mind -by first softening the rude materials of which it is composed, by a -sense of pleasure. It regulates the passions by giving a loose to the -imagination. It points out the selfish and depraved to our detestation, -the amiable and generous to our admiration; and if it clothes the more -seductive vices with the borrowed graces of wit and fancy, even those -graces operate as a diversion to the coarser poison of experience and -bad example, and often prevent or carry off the infection by inoculating -the mind with a certain taste and elegance. To shew how little we agree -with the common declamations against the immoral tendency of the stage -on this score, we will hazard a conjecture, that the acting of the -Beggar’s Opera a certain number of nights every year since it was first -brought out, has done more towards putting down the practice of highway -robbery, than all the gibbets that ever were erected. A person, after -seeing this piece is too deeply imbued with a sense of humanity, is in -too good humour with himself and the rest of the world, to set about -cutting throats or rifling pockets. Whatever makes a jest of vice, -leaves it too much a matter of indifference for any one in his senses to -rush desperately on his ruin for its sake. We suspect that just the -contrary effect must be produced by the representation of George -Barnwell, which is too much in the style of the Ordinary’s sermon to -meet with any better success. The mind, in such cases, instead of being -deterred by the alarming consequences held out to it, revolts against -the denunciation of them as an insult offered to its free-will, and, in -a spirit of defiance, returns a practical answer to them, by daring the -worst that can happen. The most striking lesson ever read to levity and -licentiousness, is in the last act of the Inconstant, where young -Mirabel is preserved by the fidelity of his mistress, Orinda, in the -disguise of a page, from the hands of assassins, into whose power he has -been allured by the temptations of vice and beauty. There never was a -rake who did not become in imagination a reformed man, during the -representation of the last trying scenes of this admirable comedy. - -If the stage is useful as a school of instruction, it is no less so as a -source of amusement. It is the source of the greatest enjoyment at the -time, and a never-failing fund of agreeable reflection afterwards. The -merits of a new play, or of a new actor, are always among the first -topics of polite conversation. One way in which public exhibitions -contribute to refine and humanise mankind, is by supplying them with -ideas and subjects of conversation and interest in common. The progress -of civilisation is in proportion to the number of common-places current -in society. For instance, if we meet with a stranger at an inn or in a -stage-coach, who knows nothing but his own affairs, his shop, his -customers, his farm, his pigs, his poultry, we can carry on no -conversation with him on these local and personal matters: the only way -is to let him have all the talk to himself. But if he has fortunately -ever seen Mr. Liston act, this is an immediate topic of mutual -conversation, and we agree together the rest of the evening in -discussing the merits of that inimitable actor, with the same -satisfaction as in talking over the affairs of the most intimate friend. - -If the stage thus introduces us familiarly to our contemporaries, it -also brings us acquainted with former times. It is an interesting -revival of past ages, manners, opinions, dresses, persons, and -actions,—whether it carries us back to the wars of York and Lancaster, -or half way back to the heroic times of Greece and Rome, in some -translation from the French, or quite back to the age of Charles II. in -the scenes of Congreve and of Etherege, (the gay Sir George!)—happy age, -when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost -stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a -sword-knot, or the adjustment of a side-curl; when the soul spoke out in -all the pleasing eloquence of dress; and beaux and belles, enamoured of -themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies -in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! - -A good company of comedians, a Theatre-Royal judiciously managed, is -your true Herald’s College; the only Antiquarian Society, that is worth -a rush. It is for this reason that there is such an air of romance about -players, and that it is pleasanter to see them, even in their own -persons, than any of the three learned professions. We feel more respect -for John Kemble in a plain coat, than for the Lord Chancellor on the -woolsack. He is surrounded, to our eyes, with a greater number of -imposing recollections: he is a more reverend piece of formality; a more -complicated tissue of costume. We do not know whether to look upon this -accomplished actor as Pierre or King John or Coriolanus or Cato or -Leontes or the Stranger. But we see in him a stately hieroglyphic of -humanity; a living monument of departed greatness, a sombre comment on -the rise and fall of kings. We look after him till he is out of sight, -as we listen to a story of one of Ossian’s heroes, to ‘a tale of other -times!’ - -One of the most affecting things we know is to see a favourite actor -take leave of the stage. We were present not long ago when Mr. Bannister -quitted it. We do not wonder that his feelings were overpowered on the -occasion: ours were nearly so too. We remembered him, in the first -heyday of our youthful spirits, in the _Prize_, in which he played so -delightfully with that fine old croaker Suett, and Madame Storace,—in -the farce of _My Grandmother_, in the _Son-in-Law_, in _Autolycus_, and -in _Scrub_, in which our satisfaction was at its height. At that time, -King and Parsons, and Dodd, and Quick, and Edwin were in the full vigour -of their reputation, who are now all gone. We still feel the vivid -delight with which we used to see their names in the play-bills, as we -went along to the Theatre. Bannister was one of the last of these that -remained; and we parted with him as we should with one of our oldest and -best friends. The most pleasant feature in the profession of a player, -and which, indeed, is peculiar to it, is that we not only admire the -talents of those who adorn it, but we contract a personal intimacy with -them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with -affection as actors. We greet them on the stage; we like to meet them in -the streets; they almost always recall to us pleasant associations; and -we feel our gratitude excited, without the uneasiness of a sense of -obligation. The very gaiety and popularity, however, which surround the -life of a favourite performer, make the retiring from it a very serious -business. It glances a mortifying reflection on the shortness of human -life, and the vanity of human pleasures. Something reminds us, that ‘all -the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ - - - NO. 39.] ON THE SAME [JAN. 5, 1817. - -It has been considered as the misfortune of first-rate talents for the -stage, that they leave no record behind them except that of vague -rumour, and that the genius of a great actor perishes with him, ‘leaving -the world no copy.’ This is a misfortune, or at least an unpleasant -circumstance, to actors; but it is, perhaps, an advantage to the stage. -It leaves an opening to originality. The stage is always beginning anew; -the candidates for theatrical reputation are always setting out afresh, -unencumbered by the affectation of the faults or excellences of their -predecessors. In this respect, we should imagine that the average -quantity of dramatic talent remains more nearly the same than that in -any other walk of art. In no other instance do the complaints of the -degeneracy of the moderns seem so unfounded as in this; and Colley -Cibber’s account of the regular decline of the stage, from the time of -Shakspeare to that of Charles II., and from the time of Charles II. to -the beginning of George II. appears quite ridiculous. The stage is a -place where genius is sure to come upon its legs, in a generation or two -at farthest. In the other arts, (as painting and poetry), it has been -contended that what has been well done already, by giving rise to -endless vapid imitations, is an obstacle to what might be done well -hereafter: that the models or _chef-d’œuvres_ of art, where they are -accumulated, choke up the path to excellence; and that the works of -genius, where they can be rendered permanent and handed down from age to -age, not only prevent, but render superfluous, future productions of the -same kind. We have not, neither do we want, two Shakspeares, two -Miltons, two Raphaels, any more than we require two suns in the same -sphere. Even Miss O’Neill stands a little in the way of our -recollections of Mrs. Siddons. But Mr. Kean is an excellent substitute -for the memory of Garrick, whom we never saw. When an author dies, it is -no matter, for his works remain. When a great actor dies, there is a -void produced in society, a gap which requires to be filled up. Who does -not go to see Kean? Who, if Garrick were alive, would go to see him? At -least one or the other must have quitted the stage. We have seen what a -ferment has been excited among our living artists by the exhibition of -the works of the old Masters at the British Gallery. What would the -actors say to it, if, by any spell or power of necromancy, all the -celebrated actors, for the last hundred years could be made to appear -again on the boards of Covent Garden and Drury-Lane, for the last time, -in all their most brilliant parts? What a rich treat to the town, what a -feast for the critics, to go and see Betterton, and Booth, and Wilks, -and Sandford, and Nokes, and Leigh, and Penkethman, and Bullock, and -Estcourt, and Dogget, and Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Montfort, and Mrs. -Oldfield, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mrs. Cibber, and Cibber himself, the -prince of coxcombs, and Macklin, and Quin, and Rich, and Mrs. Clive, and -Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Abington, and Weston, and Shuter, and Garrick, -and all the rest of those who ‘gladdened life, and whose deaths eclipsed -the gaiety of nations’! We should certainly be there. We should buy a -ticket for the season. We should enjoy _our hundred days_ again. We -should not lose a single night. We would not, for a great deal, be -absent from Betterton’s Hamlet or his Brutus, or from Booth’s Cato, as -it was first acted to the contending applause of Whigs and Tories. We -should be in the first row when Mrs. Barry (who was kept by Lord -Rochester, and with whom Otway was in love) played Monimia or Belvidera; -and we suppose we should go to see Mrs. Bracegirdle (with whom all the -world was in love) in all her parts. We should then know exactly whether -Penkethman’s manner of picking a chicken, and Bullock’s mode of -devouring asparagus, answered to the ingenious account of them in the -Tatler; and whether Dogget was equal to Dowton—whether Mrs. Montfort[63] -or Mrs. Abington was the finest lady—whether Wilks or Cibber was the -best Sir Harry Wildair—whether Macklin was really ‘the Jew that -Shakspeare drew,’ and whether Garrick was, upon the whole, so great an -actor as the world have made him out! Many people have a strong desire -to pry into the secrets of futurity: for our own parts, we should be -satisfied if we had the power to recall the dead, and live the past over -again as often as we pleased! Players, after all, have little reason to -complain of their hard-earned, short-lived popularity. One thunder of -applause from pit, boxes, and gallery, is equal to a whole immortality -of posthumous fame: and when we hear an actor, whose modesty is equal to -his merit, declare, that he would like to see a dog wag his tail in -approbation, what must he feel when he sees the whole house in a roar! -Besides, Fame, as if their reputation had been entrusted to her alone, -has been particularly careful of the renown of her theatrical -favourites: she forgets one by one, and year by year, those who have -been great lawyers, great statesmen, and great warriors in their day; -but the name of Garrick still survives with the works of Reynolds and of -Johnson. - -Actors have been accused, as a profession, of being extravagant and -dissipated. While they are said to be so as a piece of common cant, they -are likely to continue so. But there is a sentence in Shakspeare which -should be stuck as a label in the mouths of our beadles and whippers-in -of morality: ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill -together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not: and -our vices would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.’ With -respect to the extravagance of actors, as a traditional character, it is -not to be wondered at. They live from hand to mouth: they plunge from -want into luxury; they have no means of making money _breed_, and all -professions that do not live by turning money into money, or have not a -certainty of accumulating it in the end by parsimony, spend it. -Uncertain of the future, they make sure of the present moment. This is -not unwise. Chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, they sometimes -pass into the sunshine of fortune, and are lifted to the very pinnacle -of public favour; yet even there cannot calculate on the continuance of -success, but are, ‘like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every -blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep!’ Besides, if the -young enthusiast, who is smitten with the stage, and with the public as -a mistress, were naturally a close _hunks_, he would become or remain a -city clerk, instead of turning player. Again, with respect to the habit -of convivial indulgence, an actor, to be a good one, must have a great -spirit of enjoyment in himself, strong impulses, strong passions, and a -strong sense of pleasure: for it is his business to imitate the -passions, and to communicate pleasure to others. A man of genius is not -a machine. The neglected actor may be excused if he drinks oblivion of -his disappointments; the successful one, if he quaffs the applause of -the world, and enjoys the friendship of those who are the friends of the -favourites of fortune, in draughts of nectar. There is no path so steep -as that of fame: no labour so hard as the pursuit of excellence. The -intellectual excitement, inseparable from those professions which call -forth all our sensibility to pleasure and pain, requires some -corresponding physical excitement to support our failure, and not a -little to allay the ferment of the spirits attendant on success. If -there is any tendency to dissipation beyond this in the profession of a -player, it is owing to the prejudices entertained against them, to that -spirit of bigotry which in a neighbouring country would deny actors -Christian burial after their death, and to that cant of criticism, -which, in our own, slurs over their characters, while living, with a -half-witted jest. - -A London engagement is generally considered by actors as the _ne plus -ultra_ of their ambition, as ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished,’ as -the great prize in the lottery of their professional life. But this -appears to us, who are not in the secret, to be rather the prose -termination of their adventurous career: it is the provincial -commencement that is the poetical and truly enviable part of it. After -that, they have comparatively little to hope or fear. ‘The wine of life -is drunk, and but the lees remain.’ In London, they become gentlemen, -and the King’s servants: but it is the romantic mixture of the hero and -the vagabond that constitutes the essence of the player’s life. It is -the transition from their real to their assumed characters, from the -contempt of the world to the applause of the multitude, that gives its -zest to the latter, and raises them as much above common humanity at -night, as in the daytime they are depressed below it. ‘Hurried from -fierce extremes, by contrast made more fierce,’—it is rags and a -flock-bed which give their splendour to a plume of feathers and a -throne. We should suppose, that if the most admired actor on the London -stage were brought to confession on this point, he would acknowledge -that all the applause he had received from ‘brilliant and overflowing -audiences,’ was nothing to the light-headed intoxication of unlooked-for -success in a barn. In town, actors are criticised: in country-places, -they are wondered at, or hooted at: it is of little consequence which, -so that the interval is not too long between. For ourselves, we own that -the description of the strolling player in Gil Blas, soaking his dry -crusts in the well by the roadside, presents to us a perfect picture of -human felicity. - - W. H. - - - NO. 40.] WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE?—A [JAN. 11, 15; - FRAGMENT SEP. 11, 1814. - -It is often made a subject of complaint and surprise, that the arts in -this country, and in modern times, have not kept pace with the general -progress of society and civilisation in other respects, and it has been -proposed to remedy the deficiency by more carefully availing ourselves -of the advantages which time and circumstances have placed within our -reach, but which we have hitherto neglected, the study of the antique, -the formation of academies, and the distribution of prizes. - -First, the complaint itself, that the arts do not attain that -progressive degree of perfection which might reasonably be expected from -them, proceeds on a false notion, for the analogy appealed to in support -of the regular advances of art to higher degrees of excellence, totally -fails; it applies to science, not to art. Secondly, the expedients -proposed to remedy the evil by adventitious means are only calculated to -confirm it. The arts hold immediate communication with nature, and are -only derived from that source. When that original impulse no longer -exists, when the inspiration of genius is fled, all the attempts to -recal it are no better than the tricks of galvanism to restore the dead -to life. The arts may be said to resemble Antæus in his struggle with -Hercules, who was strangled when he was raised above the ground, and -only revived and recovered his strength when he touched his mother -earth. - -Nothing is more contrary to the fact than the supposition that in what -we understand by the _fine arts_, as painting and poetry, relative -perfection is only the result of repeated efforts, and that what has -been once well done constantly leads to something better. What is -mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is -progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: what is not mechanical -or definite, but depends on genius, taste, and feeling, very soon -becomes stationary or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by -transfusion. The contrary opinion is, indeed, a common error, which has -grown up, like many others, from transferring an analogy of one kind to -something quite distinct, without thinking of the difference in the -nature of the things, or attending to the difference of the results. For -most persons, finding what wonderful advances have been made in biblical -criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, -etc.—_i.e._, in things depending on mere inquiry and experiment, or on -absolute demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude, that there -was a general tendency in the efforts of the human intellect to improve -by repetition, and in all other arts and institutions to grow perfect -and mature by time. We look back upon the theological creed of our -ancestors, and their discoveries in natural philosophy, with a smile of -pity; science, and the arts connected with it, have all had their -infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to have in them no principle -of limitation or decay; and, inquiring no farther about the matter, we -infer, in the height of our self-congratulation, and in the intoxication -of our pride, that the same progress has been, and will continue to be, -made in all other things which are the work of man. The fact, however, -stares us so plainly in the face, that one would think the smallest -reflection must suggest the truth, and overturn our sanguine theories. -The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters, and the -finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared soon after the birth -of these arts, and lived in a state of society which was, in other -respects, comparatively barbarous. Those arts, which depend on -individual genius and incommunicable power, have always leaped at once -from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn of invention to their -meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in general declined ever -after. This is the peculiar distinction and privilege of each, of -science and of art; of the one, never to attain its utmost summit of -perfection, and of the other, to arrive at it almost at once. Homer, -Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto (Milton alone was of a -later age, and not the worse for it), Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, -Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio—all lived near the beginning of -their arts—perfected, and all but created them. These giant sons of -genius stand, indeed, upon the earth, but they tower above their -fellows, and the long line of their successors does not interpose any -thing to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength -and stature they are unrivalled, in grace and beauty they have never -been surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are -called), great men have arisen one by one, as it were by throes and at -intervals: though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial -minds were of an inferior order, as Tasso and Pope among poets, Guido -and Vandyke among painters. But in the earliest stages of the arts, when -the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the language as -it were acquired, they rose by clusters and in constellations, never to -rise again. - -The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of thought -within us, and with the world of sense without us—with what we know, and -see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred shrine of our own -breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature. The pulse of the -passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings of the human -heart were as well understood three thousand years ago, as they are at -present; the face of nature and ‘the human face divine,’ shone as bright -then as they have ever done. It is this light, reflected by true genius -on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the -Muses’ feet, like that which ‘circled Una’s angel face, - - ‘And made a sunshine in the shady place.’ - -Nature is the soul of art. There is a strength in the imagination that -reposes entirely on nature, which nothing else can supply. There is in -the old poets and painters a vigour and grasp of mind, a full possession -of their subject, a confidence and firm faith, a sublime simplicity, an -elevation of thought, proportioned to their depth of feeling, an -increasing force and impetus, which moves, penetrates, and kindles all -that comes in contact with it, which seems, not theirs, but given to -them. It is this reliance on the power of nature which has produced -those master-pieces by the Prince of Painters, in which expression is -all in all, where one spirit, that of truth, pervades every part, brings -down heaven to earth, mingles cardinals and popes with angels and -apostles, and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true touches -and intense feeling of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It was the -same trust in nature that enabled Chaucer to describe the patient sorrow -of Griselda; or the delight of that young beauty in the Flower and the -Leaf, shrouded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, -to the singing of the nightingale, while her joy rises with the rising -song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the -full tide of pleasure, and still increases and repeats and prolongs -itself, and knows no ebb. It is thus that Boccaccio, in the divine story -of the Hawk, has represented Frederigo Alberigi steadily contemplating -his favourite Falcon (the wreck and remnant of his fortune), and glad to -see how fat and fair a bird she is, thinking what a dainty repast she -would make for his Mistress, who had deigned to visit him in his low -cell. So Isabella mourns over her pot of Basile, and never asks for any -thing but that. So Lear calls out for his poor fool, and invokes the -heavens, for they are old like him. So Titian impressed on the -countenance of that young Neapolitan nobleman in the Louvre, a look that -never passed away. So Nicolas Poussin describes some shepherds wandering -out in a morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this -inscription, ‘I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN.’ - -In general, it must happen in the first stages of the Arts, that as none -but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise -them, so none but those who had a natural taste for them would pretend -to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable advantage to -the man of true genius, for it is no other than the privilege of being -tried by his peers. In an age when connoisseurship had not become a -fashion; when religion, war, and intrigue, occupied the time and -thoughts of the great, only those minds of superior refinement would be -led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their -excellence; and in giving way to the powerful bent of his own genius, -the painter was most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had -not to deal with pretenders to taste, through vanity, affectation, and -idleness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul; to that -deep and innate sensibility to truth and beauty, which required only a -proper object to have its enthusiasm excited; and to that independent -strength of mind, which, in the midst of ignorance and barbarism, hailed -and fostered genius, wherever it met with it. Titian was patronised by -Charles V., Count Castiglione was the friend of Raphael. These were true -patrons, and true critics; and as there were no others, (for the world, -in general, merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt, -that such a period of dearth of factitious patronage would be the most -favourable to the full developement of the greatest talents, and the -attainment of the highest excellence. - -The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of -taste; but it is only the former of these objects that is promoted by -public institutions and other artificial means. The number of candidates -for fame, and of pretenders to criticism, is thus increased beyond all -proportion, while the quantity of genius and feeling remains the same; -with this difference, that the man of genius is lost in the crowd of -competitors, who would never have become such but from encouragement and -example; and that the opinion of those few persons whom nature intended -for judges, is drowned in the noisy suffrages of shallow smatterers in -taste. The principle of universal suffrage, however applicable to -matters of government, which concern the common feelings and common -interests of society, is by no means applicable to matters of taste, -which can only be decided upon by the most refined understandings. The -highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be properly -understood by the generality of mankind: There are numberless beauties -and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension. It is only as -refinement and sublimity are blended with other qualities of a more -obvious and grosser nature, that they pass current with the world. Taste -is the highest degree of sensibility, or the impression made on the most -cultivated and sensible of minds, as genius is the result of the highest -powers both of feeling and invention. It may be objected, that the -public taste is capable of gradual improvement, because, in the end, the -public do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mistake. The -reputation ultimately, and often slowly affixed to works of genius is -stamped upon them by authority, not by popular consent or the common -sense of the world. We imagine that the admiration of the works of -celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names -has become so. But does not every ignorant connoisseur pretend the same -veneration, and talk with the same vapid assurance of Michael Angelo, -though he has never seen even a copy of any of his pictures, as if he -had studied them accurately,—merely because Sir Joshua Reynolds has -praised him? Is Milton more popular now than when the Paradise Lost was -first published? Or does he not rather owe his reputation to the -judgment of a few persons in every successive period, accumulating in -his favour, and overpowering by its weight the public indifference? Why -is Shakspeare popular? Not from his refinement of character or -sentiment, so much as from his power of telling a story, the variety and -invention, the tragic catastrophe and broad farce of his plays. Spenser -is not yet understood. Does not Boccaccio pass to this day for a writer -of ribaldry, because his jests and lascivious tales were all that caught -the vulgar ear, while the story of the Falcon is forgotten! - - W. H. - - - End of THE ROUND TABLE. - ------ - -Footnote 30: - - It is Steele’s; and the whole paper (No. 95) is in his most delightful - manner. The dream about the mistress, however, is given to Addison by - the Editors, and the general style of that number is his; though, from - the story being related personally of Bickerstaff, who is also - represented as having been at that time in the army, we conclude it to - have originally come from Steele, perhaps in the course of - conversation. The particular incident is much more like a story of his - than of Addison’s.—H. T. - -Footnote 31: - - We had in our hands the other day an original copy of the _Tatler_, - and a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some names there - which we should hardly think of, (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among - them), and also to observe the degree of interest excited by those of - the different persons, which is not adjusted according to the rules of - the Heralds’ College. - -Footnote 32: - - Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post - which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought - up. - -Footnote 33: - - See also the passage in his prose works relating to the first design - of _Paradise Lost_. - -Footnote 34: - - ‘Oh! for my sake do you with fortune chide, - The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, - That did not better for my life provide, - Than public means which public manners breeds. - Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, - And almost thence my nature is subdued - To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.’ - - At another time, we find him ‘desiring this man’s art, and that man’s - scope’: so little was Shakspeare, as far as we can learn, enamoured of - himself! - -Footnote 35: - - See an Essay on the genius of Hogarth, by C. Lamb, published in a - periodical work, called the _Reflector_. - -Footnote 36: - - ‘A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it; it ascends me - into the brain, dries me there all the foolish, dull, and crudy - vapours which environ it; and makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, - full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered over to - the tongue, becomes excellent wit,’ etc.—_Second Part of Henry IV._ - -Footnote 37: - - We have an instance in our own times of a man, equally devoid of - understanding and principle, but who manages the House of Commons by - his _manner_ alone. - -Footnote 38: - - Mr. Wordsworth, who has written a sonnet to the King on the good that - he has done in the last fifty years, has made an attack on a set of - gipsies for having done nothing in four and twenty hours. ‘The stars - had gone their rounds, but they had not stirred from their place.’ And - why should they, if they were comfortable where they were? We did not - expect this turn from Mr. Wordsworth, whom we had considered as the - prince of poetical idlers, and patron of the philosophy of indolence, - who formerly insisted on our spending our time ‘in a wise - passiveness.’ Mr. W. will excuse us if we are not converts to his - recantation of his original doctrine; for he who changes his opinion - loses his authority. We did not look for this Sunday-school philosophy - from him. What had he himself been doing in these four and twenty - hours? Had he been admiring a flower, or writing a sonnet? We hate the - doctrine of utility, even in a philosopher, and much more in a poet: - for the only real utility is that which leads to enjoyment, and the - end is, in all cases, better than the means. A friend of ours from the - North of England proposed to make Stonehenge of some use, by building - houses with it. Mr. W.’s quarrel with the gipsies is an improvement on - this extravagance, for the gipsies are the only living monuments of - the first ages of society. They are an everlasting source of thought - and reflection on the advantages and disadvantages of the progress of - civilisation: they are a better answer to the cotton manufactories - than Mr. W. has given in the _Excursion_. ‘They are a grotesque - ornament to the civil order.’ We should be sorry to part with Mr. - Wordsworth’s poetry, because it amuses and interests us: we should be - still sorrier to part with the tents of our old friends, the Bohemian - philosophers, because they amuse and interest us more. If any one goes - a journey, the principal event in it is his meeting with a party of - gipsies. The pleasantest trait in the character of Sir Roger de - Coverley, is his interview with the gipsy fortune-teller. This is - enough. - -Footnote 39: - - The Dissenters in this country (if we except the founders of sects, - who fall under a class by themselves) have produced only two - remarkable men, Priestley and Jonathan Edwards. The work of the latter - on the Will is written with as much power of logic, and more in the - true spirit of philosophy, than any other metaphysical work in the - language. His object throughout is not to perplex the question, but to - satisfy his own mind and the reader’s. In general, the principle of - dissent arises more from want of sympathy and imagination, than from - strength of reason. The spirit of contradiction is not the spirit of - philosophy. - -Footnote 40: - - The modern Quakers come as near the mark in these cases as they can. - They do not go to plays, but they are great attenders of - spouting-clubs and lectures. They do not frequent concerts, but run - after pictures. We do not know exactly how they stand with respect to - the circulating libraries. A Quaker poet would be a literary - phenomenon. - -Footnote 41: - - We have made the above observations, not as theological partisans, but - as natural historians. We shall some time or other give the reverse of - the picture; for there are vices inherent in establishments and their - thorough-paced adherents, which well deserve to be distinctly pointed - out. - -Footnote 42: - - Is all this a rhodomontade, or literal matter of fact, not credible in - these degenerate days? - -Footnote 43: - - One of the most interesting traits of the amiable simplicity of - Walton, is the circumstance of his friendship for Cotton, one of the - ‘swash-bucklers’ of the age. Dr. Johnson said there were only three - works which the reader was sorry to come to the end of, _Don Quixote_, - _Robinson Crusoe_, and the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. Perhaps Walton’s - _Angler_ might be added to the number. - -Footnote 44: - - Oxberry’s manner of acting this character is a very edifying comment - on the text: he flings his arms about, like those of a figure pulled - by strings, and seems actuated by a pure spirit of infatuation, as if - one blast of folly had taken possession of his whole frame, - - ‘And filled up all the mighty void of sense.’ - -Footnote 45: - - The following lines are remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in - the repetition of the rhymes: - - _Titania._ Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; - Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; - Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, - With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; - The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, - And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, - And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, - To have my love to bed, and to arise: - And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, - To fan the moon beams from his sleeping eyes;’ - Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.’ - -Footnote 46: - - The late ingenious Baron Grimm, of acute critical memory, was up to - the merit of the _Beggar’s Opera_. In his Correspondence, he says, ‘If - it be true that the nearer a writer is to Nature, the more certain he - is of pleasing, it must be allowed that the English, in their dramatic - pieces, have greatly the advantage over us. There reigns in them an - inestimable tone of nature, which the timidity of our taste has - banished from French pieces. M. Patu has just published, in two - volumes, _A selection of smaller dramatic pieces, translated from the - English_, which will eminently support what I have advanced. The - principal one among this selection is the celebrated _Beggar’s Opera_ - of Gay, which has had such an amazing run in England. We are here in - the very worst company imaginable; the _Dramatis Personæ_ are robbers, - pickpockets, gaolers, prostitutes, and the like; yet we are highly - amused, and in no haste to quit them; and why? Because there is - nothing in the world more original or more natural. There is no - occasion to compare our most celebrated comic operas with this, to see - how far we are removed from truth and nature, and this is the reason - that, notwithstanding our wit, we are almost always flat and insipid. - Two faults are generally committed by our writers, which they seem - incapable of avoiding. They think they have done wonders if they have - only faithfully copied the dictionaries of the personages they bring - upon the stage, forgetting that the great art is to chuse the moments - of character and passion in those who are to speak, since it is those - moments alone that render them interesting. For want of this - discrimination, the piece necessarily sinks into insipidity and - monotony. Why do almost all M. Vade’s pieces fatigue the audience to - death? Because all his characters speak the same language; because - each is a perfect resemblance of the other. Instead of this, in the - _Beggar’s Opera_, among eight or ten girls of the town, each has her - separate character, her peculiar traits, her peculiar modes of - expression, which give her a marked distinction from her - companions.’—Vol. i. p. 185. - -Footnote 47: - - He who speaks two languages has no country. The French, when they made - their language the common language of the Courts of Europe, gained - more than by all their subsequent conquests. - -Footnote 48: - - There is, however, in the African physiognomy a grandeur and a force, - arising from this uniform character of violence and abruptness. It is - consistent with itself throughout. Entire deformity can only be found - where the features have not only no symmetry or softness in - themselves, but have no connection with one another, presenting every - variety of wretchedness, and a jumble of all sorts of defects, such as - we see in Hogarth or in the streets of London; for instance, a large - bottle-nose, with a small mouth twisted awry. - -Footnote 49: - - The following version, communicated by a classical friend, is exact - and elegant: - - ‘He said; and strait the herald Argicide - Beneath his feet his winged sandals tied, - Immortal, golden, that his flight could bear - O’er seas and lands, like waftage of the air. - His rod too, that can close the eyes of men - In balmy sleep, and open them again, - He took, and holding it in hand, went flying: - Till, from Pieria’s top the sea descrying, - Down to it sheer he dropp’d; and scour’d away - Like the wild gull, that, fishing o’er the bay, - Flaps on, with pinions dipping in the brine;— - So went on the far sea the shape divine.’ - - _Odyssey_, book v. - - ——‘That was Arion crown’d:— - So went he playing on the wat’ry plain.’ - - _Faerie Queen._ - - There is a striking description in Mr. Burke’s Reflections of the late - Queen of France, whose charms had left their poison in the heart of - this Irish orator and patriot, and set the world in a ferment sixteen - years afterwards. ‘And surely never lighted on this orb, which she - hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.’ The idea is in Don - Quixote, where the Duenna speaks of the air with which the Duchess - ‘treads, or rather seems to disdain the ground she walks on.’ We have - heard the same account of the gracefulness of Marie Antoinette from an - artist, who saw her at Versailles much about the same time that Mr. - Burke did. He stood in one corner of a little antechamber, and as the - doors were narrow, she was obliged to pass sideways with her hoop. She - glided by him in an instant, as if borne on a cloud. - -Footnote 50: - - In a fruit or flower-piece by Vanhuysum, the minutest details acquire - a certain grace and beauty from the delicacy with which they are - finished. The eye dwells with a giddy delight on the liquid drops of - dew, on the gauze wings of an insect, on the hair and feathers of a - bird’s nest, the streaked and speckled egg-shells, the fine legs of - the little travelling caterpillar. Who will suppose that the painter - had not the same pleasure in detecting these nice distinctions in - nature, that the critic has in tracing them in the picture? - -Footnote 51: - - We here allude particularly to Turner, the ablest landscape painter - now living, whose pictures are, however, too much abstractions of - aerial perspective, and representations not so properly of the objects - of nature as of the medium through which they are seen. They are the - triumph of the knowledge of the artist, and of the power of the pencil - over the barrenness of the subject. They are pictures of the elements - of air, earth, and water. The artist delights to go back to the first - chaos of the world, or to that state of things when the waters were - separated from the dry land, and light from darkness, but as yet no - living thing nor tree bearing fruit was seen upon the face of the - earth. All is ‘without form and void.’ Some one said of his landscapes - that they were _pictures of nothing, and very like_. - -Footnote 52: - - Raphael not only could not paint a landscape; he could not paint - people in a landscape. He could not have painted the heads or the - figures, or even the dresses, of the St. Peter Martyr. His figures - have always an _in-door_ look, that is, a set, determined, voluntary, - dramatic character, arising from their own passions, or a watchfulness - of those of others, and want that wild uncertainty of expression, - which is connected with the accidents of nature and the changes of the - elements. He has nothing _romantic_ about him. - -Footnote 53: - - A good-natured man will always have a smack of pedantry about him. A - lawyer, who talks about law, _certioraris_, _noli prosequis_, and silk - gowns, though he may be a blockhead, is by no means dangerous. It is a - very bad sign (unless where it arises from singular modesty) when you - cannot tell a man’s profession from his conversation. Such persons - either feel no interest in what concerns them most, or do not express - what they feel. ‘Not to admire any thing’ is a very unsafe rule. A - London apprentice, who did not admire the Lord Mayor’s coach, would - stand a good chance of being hanged. We know but one person absurd - enough to have formed his whole character on the above maxim of - Horace, and who affects a superiority over others from an uncommon - degree of natural and artificial stupidity. - -Footnote 54: - - ‘Je crois que l’imagination étoit la première de ses facultés, et - qu’elle absorboit même toutes les autres.’—P. 80. - -Footnote 55: - - ‘Il avoit une grande puissance de raison sur les matieres abstraites, - sur les objets qui n’ont de réalité que dans la pensée,’ etc.—P. 81. - -Footnote 56: - - He did more towards the French Revolution than any other man. - Voltaire, by his wit and penetration, had rendered superstition - contemptible, and tyranny odious: but it was Rousseau who brought the - feeling of irreconcilable enmity to rank and privileges, _above - humanity_, home to the bosom of every man,—identified it with all the - pride of intellect, and with the deepest yearnings of the human heart. - -Footnote 57: - - We shall here give one passage as an example, which has always - appeared to us the very perfection of this kind of personal and local - description. It is that where he gives an account of his being one of - the choristers at the Cathedral at Chambery: ‘On jugera bien que la - vie de la maîtrise toujours chantante et gaie, avec les Musiciens et - les Enfans de chœur, me plaisoit plus que celle du Séminaire avec les - Peres de S. Lazare. Cependant, cette vie, pour être plus libre, n’en - étoit pas moins égale et réglée. J’étois fait pour aimer - l’indépendance et pour n’en abuser jamais. Durant six mois entiers, je - ne sortis pas une seule fois, que pour aller chez Maman ou à l’Église, - et je n’en fus pas même tenté. Cette intervalle est un de ceux où j’ai - vécu dans le plus grand calme, et que je me suis rappelé avec le plus - de plaisir. Dans les situations diverses où je me suis trouvé, - quelques uns out été marqués par un tel sentiment de bien-être, qu’en - les remémorant j’en suis affecté comme si j’y étois encore. Non - seulement je me rappelle les tems, les lieux, les personnes, mais tous - les objets environnans, la température de l’air, son odeur, sa - couleur, une certaine impression locale qui ne s’est fait sentir que - là, et dont le souvenir vif m’y transporte de nouveau. Par exemple, - tout ce qu’on répétait a la maîtrise, tout ce qu’on chantoit au chœur, - tout ce qu’on y faisoit, le bel et noble habit des Chanoines, les - hasubles des Prêtres, les mitres des Chantres, la figure des - Musiciens, un vieux Charpentier boiteux qui jouoit de la contrebasse, - un petit Abbé biondin qui jouoit du violon, le lambeau de soutane - qu’après avoir posé son épée, M. le Maître endossoit par-dessus son - habit laïque, et le beau surplis fin dont il en couvrait les loques - pour aller au chœur; l’orgueil avec lequel j’allois, tenant ma petite - flûte à bec, m’établir dans l’orchestre, à la tribune, pour un petit - bout de récit que M. le Maître avoit fait exprès pour moi: le bon - diner qui nous attendoit ensuite, le bon appétit qu’on y portoit:—ce - concours d’objets vivement retracé m’a cent fois charmé dans ma - mémoire, autant et plus que dans la realité. J’ai gardé toujours une - affection tendre pour un certain air du _Conditor alme syderum_ qui - marche par iambes; parce qu’un Dimanche de l’Avent j’entendis de mon - lit chanter cette hymne, avant le jour, sur le perron de la - Cathédrale, selon un rite de cette eglise là. Mlle. _Merceret_, femme - de chambre de Maman, savoit un peu de musique; je n’oublierai jamais - un petit motet _afferte_, que M. le Maître me fit chanter avec elle, - et que sa maîtresse écoutait avec tant de plaisir. Enfin tout, jusqu’à - la bonne servante _Perrine_, qui étoit si bonne fille, et que les - enfans de chœur faisoient tant endêver—tout dans les souvenirs de ces - tems de bonheur et d’innocence revient souvent me ravir et - m’attrister.’—_Confessions_, LIV. iii. p. 283. - -Footnote 58: - - Burns, when about to sail for America after the first publication of - his poems, consoled himself with ‘the delicious thought of being - regarded as a clever fellow, though on the other side of the - Atlantic.’ - -Footnote 59: - - This man (Burke) who was a half poet and a half philosopher, has done - more mischief than perhaps any other person in the world. His - understanding was not competent to the discovery of any truth, but it - was sufficient to palliate a falsehood; his reasons, of little weight - in themselves, thrown into the scale of power, were dreadful. Without - genius to adorn the beautiful, he had the art to throw a dazzling veil - over the deformed and disgusting; and to strew the flowers of - imagination over the rotten carcass of corruption, not to prevent, but - to communicate the infection. His jealousy of Rousseau was one chief - cause of his opposition to the French Revolution. The writings of the - one had changed the institutions of a kingdom; while the speeches of - the other, with the intrigues of his whole party, had changed nothing - but the _turnspit of the King’s kitchen_. He would have blotted out - the broad pure light of Heaven, because it did not first shine in at - the little Gothic windows of St. Stephen’s Chapel. The genius of - Rousseau had levelled the towers of the Bastile with the dust; our - zealous reformist, who would rather be doing mischief than nothing, - tried, therefore, to patch them up again, by calling that loathsome - dungeon the King’s castle, and by fulsome adulation of the virtues of - a Court strumpet. This man,—but enough of him here. - -Footnote 60: - - This word is not English. - -Footnote 61: - - Written in 1806. - -Footnote 62: - - Plato’s cave, in which he supposes a man to be shut up all his life - with his back to the light, and to see nothing of the figures of men, - or other objects that pass by, but their shadows on the opposite wall - of his cell, so that when he is let out and sees the real figures, he - is only dazzled and confounded by them, seems an ingenious satire on - the life of a book-worm. - -Footnote 63: - - The following lively description of this actress is given by Cibber in - his Apology:— - - ‘What found most employment for her whole various excellence at once, - was the part of Melantha, in Marriage-à-la-mode. Melantha is as - finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems - to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could - possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her - language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual - hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. And - though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you a just likeness - of Mrs. Montfort’s action, yet the fantastic impression is still so - strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, though - fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that break from her - are upon a gallant never seen before, who delivers her a letter from - her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable - lover. Here now, one would think she might naturally shew a little of - the sex’s decent reserve, though never so slightly covered! No, sir; - not a tittle of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor-soul’d country - gentlewoman: she is too much a court-lady, to be under so vulgar a - confusion: she reads the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping - lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were - impatient to outgo her father’s commands, by making a complete - conquest of him at once: and that the letter might not embarrass her - attack, crack! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon - him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes her - dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the - conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of - fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty - falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her - impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not - give her lover leave to praise it: Silent assenting bows, and vain - endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he is - admitted to, which at last he is relieved from, by her engagement to - half a score visits, which she _swims_ from him to make, with a - promise to return in a twinkling.’—_The Life of Colley Cibber_, p. - 138. - - - - - CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - -The first edition of the _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_ (5½ in. × 9 -in.) was published in 1817. The imprint reads thus:—London: | Printed by -C. H. Reynell, 21, Piccadilly, | for R. Hunter, successor to Mr. -Johnson, | in St. Paul’s Church-yard; | and C. and J. Ollier, | -Welbeck-street, Cavendish-square. | 1817. The second edition was issued -in the following year, and the imprint is:—London: | Printed for Taylor -and Hessey, | 93, Fleet Street. | 1818. There are several verbal -alterations in the second edition, and one curious _erratum_: ‘In -_Lear_, p. 173 [p. 269 present edition] dele line “Not an hour more nor -less.’” In the text of the play these words occur between ‘Fourscore and -upward’ and ‘And, to deal plainly.’ The second edition also was printed -by C. H. Reynell, Broad-street, Golden-square. No further edition was -published in Hazlitt’s lifetime, and the present issue has consequently -been printed from a copy of the second edition: the proofs, however, -have been read with a copy of the first edition, and one or two -misprints thereby corrected. In 1818 a pirated American edition was -published at Boston. - -A contemporary criticism of the volume may be found in the _Edinburgh -Review_, 1817, by Francis Jeffrey. See also E. L. Bulwer’s _Some -Thoughts on the Genius of Hazlitt_. One hundred pounds was paid to -Hazlitt by C. H. Reynell for the copyright, and the first edition, at -half a guinea, was sold in six weeks: an adverse criticism by William -Gifford in the _Quarterly Review_ (No. 36, January 1818) spoiled the -sale of the second edition. - -The following announcement appears on the back of the half-title of the -second edition:—‘This day is published, Lectures on the English Poets, -delivered at the Surry Institution, By William Hazlitt. In one vol. 8vo. -price 10s. 6d.’ - - - - - TO - - CHARLES LAMB, ESQ. - - THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, AS A MARK OF - - OLD FRIENDSHIP - - AND LASTING ESTEEM, - - BY THE AUTHOR. - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - - Preface 171 - - Cymbeline 179 - - Macbeth 186 - - Julius Cæsar 195 - - Othello 200 - - Timon of Athens 210 - - Coriolanus 214 - - Troilus and Cressida 221 - - Antony and Cleopatra 228 - - Hamlet 232 - - The Tempest 238 - - The Midsummer Night’s Dream 244 - - Romeo and Juliet 248 - - Lear 257 - - Richard II. 272 - - Henry IV. in Two Parts 277 - - Henry V. 285 - - Henry VI. in Three Parts 292 - - Richard III. 298 - - Henry VIII. 303 - - King John 306 - - Twelfth Night; or, What You Will 313 - - The Two Gentlemen of Verona 318 - - The Merchant of Venice 320 - - The Winter’s Tale 324 - - All’s Well that Ends Well 329 - - Love’s Labour’s Lost 332 - - Much Ado About Nothing 335 - - As You Like It 338 - - The Taming of the Shrew 341 - - Measure for Measure 345 - - The Merry Wives of Windsor 349 - - The Comedy of Errors 351 - - Doubtful Plays of Shakespear 353 - - Poems and Sonnets 357 - - - PREFACE - -It is observed by Mr. Pope, that - - ‘If ever any author deserved the name of an _original_, it was - Shakespear. Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the - fountains of nature; it proceeded through Ægyptian strainers and - channels, and came to him not without some tincture of the learning, - or some cast of the models, of those before him. The poetry of - Shakespear was inspiration indeed: he is not so much an imitator, as - an instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks - from her, as that she speaks through him. - - ‘His _characters_ are so much nature herself, that it is a sort of - injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of - other poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they - received them from one another, and were but multipliers of the same - image: each picture, like a mock-rainbow, is but the reflection of a - reflection. But every single character in Shakespear, is as much an - individual, as those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any - two alike; and such, as from their relation or affinity in any - respect appear most to be twins, will, upon comparison, be found - remarkably distinct. To this life and variety of character, we must - add the wonderful preservation of it; which is such throughout his - plays, that had all the speeches been printed without the very names - of the persons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty - to every speaker.’ - -The object of the volume here offered to the public, is to illustrate -these remarks in a more particular manner by a reference to each play. A -gentleman of the name of Mason, the author of a Treatise on Ornamental -Gardening (not Mason the poet), began a work of a similar kind about -forty years ago, but he only lived to finish a parallel between the -characters of Macbeth and Richard III. which is an exceedingly ingenious -piece of analytical criticism. Richardson’s Essays include but a few of -Shakespear’s principal characters. The only work which seemed to -supersede the necessity of an attempt like the present was Schlegel’s -very admirable Lectures on the Drama, which give by far the best account -of the plays of Shakespear that has hitherto appeared. The only -circumstances in which it was thought not impossible to improve on the -manner in which the German critic has executed this part of his design, -were in avoiding an appearance of mysticism in his style, not very -attractive to the English reader, and in bringing illustrations from -particular passages of the plays themselves, of which Schlegel’s work, -from the extensiveness of his plan, did not admit. We will at the same -time confess, that some little jealousy of the character of the national -understanding was not without its share in producing the following -undertaking, for ‘we were piqued’ that it should be reserved for a -foreign critic to give ‘reasons for the faith which we English have in -Shakespear.’ Certainly no writer among ourselves has shown either the -same enthusiastic admiration of his genius, or the same philosophical -acuteness in pointing out his characteristic excellences. As we have -pretty well exhausted all we had to say upon this subject in the body of -the work, we shall here transcribe Schlegel’s general account of -Shakespear, which is in the following words:— - - ‘Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the - delineation of character as Shakespear’s. It not only grasps the - diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; - not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, - the sage and the idiot speak and act with equal truth; not only does - he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and - pourtray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent - violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the - French in their wars with the English, of the English themselves - during a great part of their history, of the Southern Europeans (in - the serious part of many comedies) the cultivated society of that - time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the North; his - human characters have not only such depth and precision that they - cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in - conception:—no—this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the - gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost; - exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; - peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs:—and these beings, - existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency, - that even when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts the - conviction, that if there should be such beings, they would so - conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries with him the most - fruitful and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature,—on the other - hand, he carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the - confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the - extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard of, in such intimate - nearness. - - ‘If Shakespear deserves our admiration for his characters, he is - equally deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this - word in its widest signification, as including every mental - condition, every tone from indifference or familiar mirth to the - wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays - open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding - conditions. His passions do not at first stand displayed to us in - all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in - the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of - love. He paints, in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress - from the first origin. “He gives,” as Lessing says, “a living - picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a - feeling steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages - which it there gains; of all the stratagems by which every other - passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant - of our desires and our aversions.” Of all poets, perhaps, he alone - has pourtrayed the mental diseases,—melancholy, delirium, - lunacy,—with such inexpressible, and, in every respect, definite - truth, that the physician may enrich his observations from them in - the same manner as from real cases. - - ‘And yet Johnson has objected to Shakespear, that his pathos is not - always natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, - passages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, where his poetry - exceeds the bounds of true dialogue, where a too soaring - imagination, a too luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic - forgetfulness of himself impossible. With this exception, the - censure originates only in a fanciless way of thinking, to which - everything appears unnatural that does not suit its own tame - insipidity. Hence, an idea has been formed of simple and natural - pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and - nowise elevated above every-day life. But energetical passions - electrify the whole of the mental powers, and will, consequently, in - highly favoured natures, express themselves in an ingenious and - figurative manner. It has been often remarked, that indignation - gives wit; and, as despair occasionally breaks out into laughter, it - may sometimes also give vent to itself in antithetical comparisons. - - ‘Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been duly - weighed. Shakespear, who was always sure of his object, to move in a - sufficiently powerful manner when he wished to do so, has - occasionally, by indulging in a freer play, purposely moderated the - impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical - alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas of his art - which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in - the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient - rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the - excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; - and Shakespear acted conformably to this ingenious maxim, without - knowing it. - - ‘The objection, that Shakespear wounds our feelings by the open - display of the most disgusting moral odiousness, harrows up the mind - unmercifully, and tortures even our senses by the exhibition of the - most insupportable and hateful spectacles, is one of much greater - importance. He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and - bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exterior,—never clothed crime - and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul; and in - that respect he is every way deserving of praise. Twice he has - pourtrayed downright villains; and the masterly way in which he has - contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature, may be seen - in Iago and Richard the Third. The constant reference to a petty and - puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his - art, Shakespear lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and - tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness - inherited from a vigorous olden time not to shrink back with dismay - from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see - tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an - enamoured princess. If Shakespear falls occasionally into the - opposite extreme, it is a noble error, originating in the fulness of - a gigantic strength: and yet this tragical Titan, who storms the - heavens, and threatens to tear the world from off its hinges; who, - more terrible than Æschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and - congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at the same time, the - insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He plays with love - like a child; and his songs are breathed out like melting sighs. He - unites in his genius the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and - the most foreign, and even apparently irreconcileable properties - subsist in him peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature - have laid all their treasures at his feet. In strength a demi-god, - in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting - spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if - unconscious of his superiority: and is as open and unassuming as a - child. - - ‘Shakespear’s comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he - has shown in the pathetic and tragic: it stands on an equal - elevation, and possesses equal extent and profundity. All that I - before wished was, not to admit that the former preponderated. He is - highly inventive in comic situations and motives. It will be hardly - possible to show whence he has taken any of them; whereas, in the - serious part of his drama, he has generally laid hold of something - already known. His comic characters are equally true, various, and - profound, with his serious. So little is he disposed to caricature, - that we may rather say many of his traits are almost too nice and - delicate for the stage, that they can only be properly seized by a - great actor, and fully understood by a very acute audience. Not only - has he delineated many kinds of folly; he has also contrived to - exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting and entertaining - manner.’—Vol. ii. p. 145. - -We have the rather availed ourselves of this testimony of a foreign -critic in behalf of Shakespear, because our own countryman, Dr. Johnson, -has not been so favourable to him. It may be said of Shakespear, that -‘those who are not for him are against him’: for indifference is here -the height of injustice. We may sometimes, in order ‘to do a great -right, do a little wrong.’ An overstrained enthusiasm is more pardonable -with respect to Shakespear than the want of it; for our admiration -cannot easily surpass his genius. We have a high respect for Dr. -Johnson’s character and understanding, mixed with something like -personal attachment: but he was neither a poet nor a judge of poetry. He -might in one sense be a judge of poetry as it falls within the limits -and rules of prose, but not as it is poetry. Least of all was he -qualified to be a judge of Shakespear, who ‘alone is high fantastical.’ -Let those who have a prejudice against Johnson read Boswell’s Life of -him; as those whom he has prejudiced against Shakespear should read his -Irene. We do not say that a man to be a critic must necessarily be a -poet: but to be a good critic, he ought not to be a bad poet. Such -poetry as a man deliberately writes, such, and such only will he like. -Dr. Johnson’s Preface to his edition of Shakespear looks like a -laborious attempt to bury the characteristic merits of his author under -a load of cumbrous phraseology, and to weigh his excellences and defects -in equal scales, stuffed full of ‘swelling figures and sonorous -epithets.’ Nor could it well be otherwise; Dr. Johnson’s general powers -of reasoning overlaid his critical susceptibility. All his ideas were -cast in a given mould, in a set form: they were made out by rule and -system, by climax, inference, and antithesis:—Shakespear’s were the -reverse. Johnson’s understanding dealt only in round numbers: the -fractions were lost upon him. He reduced everything to the common -standard of conventional propriety; and the most exquisite refinement or -sublimity produced an effect on his mind, only as they could be -translated into the language of measured prose. To him an excess of -beauty was a fault; for it appeared to him like an excrescence; and his -imagination was dazzled by the blaze of light. His writings neither -shone with the beams of native genius, nor reflected them. The shifting -shapes of fancy, the rainbow hues of things, made no impression on him: -he seized only on the permanent and tangible. He had no idea of natural -objects but ‘such as he could measure with a two-foot rule, or tell upon -ten fingers’: he judged of human nature in the same way, by mood and -figure: he saw only the definite, the positive, and the practical, the -average forms of things, not their striking differences—their classes, -not their degrees. He was a man of strong common sense and practical -wisdom, rather than of genius or feeling. He retained the regular, -habitual impressions of actual objects, but he could not follow the -rapid flights of fancy, or the strong movements of passion. That is, he -was to the poet what the painter of still life is to the painter of -history. Common sense sympathises with the impressions of things on -ordinary minds in ordinary circumstances: genius catches the glancing -combinations presented to the eye of fancy, under the influence of -passion. It is the province of the didactic reasoner to take cognizance -of those results of human nature which are constantly repeated and -always the same, which follow one another in regular succession, which -are acted upon by large classes of men, and embodied in received -customs, laws, language, and institutions; and it was in arranging, -comparing, and arguing on these kind of general results, that Johnson’s -excellence lay. But he could not quit his hold of the common-place and -mechanical, and apply the general rule to the particular exception, or -shew how the nature of man was modified by the workings of passion, or -the infinite fluctuations of thought and accident. Hence he could judge -neither of the heights nor depths of poetry. Nor is this all; for being -conscious of great powers in himself, and those powers of an adverse -tendency to those of his author, he would be for setting up a foreign -jurisdiction over poetry, and making criticism a kind of Procrustes’ bed -of genius, where he might cut down imagination to matter-of-fact, -regulate the passions according to reason, and translate the whole into -logical diagrams and rhetorical declamation. Thus he says of -Shakespear’s characters, in contradiction to what Pope had observed, and -to what every one else feels, that each character is a species, instead -of being an individual. He in fact found the general species or -_didactic_ form in Shakespear’s characters, which was all he sought or -cared for; he did not find the individual traits, or the _dramatic_ -distinctions which Shakespear has engrafted on this general nature, -because he felt no interest in them. Shakespear’s bold and happy flights -of imagination were equally thrown away upon our author. He was not only -without any particular fineness of organic sensibility, alive to all the -‘mighty world of ear and eye,’ which is necessary to the painter or -musician, but without that intenseness of passion, which, seeking to -exaggerate whatever excites the feelings of pleasure or power in the -mind, and moulding the impressions of natural objects according to the -impulses of imagination, produces a genius and a taste for poetry. -According to Dr. Johnson, a mountain is sublime, or a rose is beautiful; -for that their name and definition imply. But he would no more be able -to give the description of Dover cliff in _Lear_, or the description of -flowers in _The Winter’s Tale_, than to describe the objects of a sixth -sense; nor do we think he would have any very profound feeling of the -beauty of the passages here referred to. A stately common-place, such as -Congreve’s description of a ruin in the _Mourning Bride_, would have -answered Johnson’s purpose just as well, or better than the first; and -an indiscriminate profusion of scents and hues would have interfered -less with the ordinary routine of his imagination than Perdita’s lines, -which seem enamoured of their own sweetness— - - ——‘Daffodils - That come before the swallow dares, and take - The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, - But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, - Or Cytherea’s breath.’— - -No one who does not feel the passion which these objects inspire can go -along with the imagination which seeks to express that passion and the -uneasy sense of delight accompanying it by something still more -beautiful, and no one can feel this passionate love of nature without -quick natural sensibility. To a mere literal and formal apprehension, -the inimitably characteristic epithet, ‘violets _dim_,’ must seem to -imply a defect, rather than a beauty; and to any one, not feeling the -full force of that epithet, which suggests an image like ‘the sleepy eye -of love,’ the allusion to ‘the lids of Juno’s eyes’ must appear -extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespear’s fancy lent words and images to -the most refined sensibility to nature, struggling for expression: his -descriptions are identical with the things themselves, seen through the -fine medium of passion: strip them of that connection, and try them by -ordinary conceptions and ordinary rules, and they are as grotesque and -barbarous as you please!—By thus lowering Shakespear’s genius to the -standard of common-place invention, it was easy to show that his faults -were as great as his beauties; for the excellence, which consists merely -in a conformity to rules, is counterbalanced by the technical violation -of them. Another circumstance which led to Dr. Johnson’s indiscriminate -praise or censure of Shakespear, is the very structure of his style. -Johnson wrote a kind of rhyming prose, in which he was as much compelled -to finish the different clauses of his sentences, and to balance one -period against another, as the writer of heroic verse is to keep to -lines of ten syllables with similar terminations. He no sooner -acknowledges the merits of his author in one line than the periodical -revolution of his style carries the weight of his opinion completely -over to the side of objection, thus keeping up a perpetual alternation -of perfections and absurdities. We do not otherwise know how to account -for such assertions as the following:— - - ‘In his tragic scenes, there is always something wanting, but his - comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by - the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy, for the greater - part, by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his - comedy to be instinct.’ - -Yet after saying that ‘his tragedy was skill,’ he affirms in the next -page, - - ‘His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, _for - his power was the power of nature_: when he endeavoured, like other - tragic writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead - of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to shew how much his stores - of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or - resentment of his reader.’ - -Poor Shakespear! Between the charges here brought against him, of want -of nature in the first instance, and of want of skill in the second, he -could hardly escape being condemned. And again, - - ‘But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain - when he approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and seems - fully resolved to sink them in dejection, or mollify them with - tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, - or the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon ceases to do. He - no sooner begins to move than he counteracts himself; and terror and - pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by - sudden frigidity.’ - -In all this, our critic seems more bent on maintaining the equilibrium -of his style than the consistency or truth of his opinions.—If Dr. -Johnson’s opinion was right, the following observations on Shakespear’s -Plays must be greatly exaggerated, if not ridiculous. If he was wrong, -what has been said may perhaps account for his being so, without -detracting from his ability and judgment in other things. - -It is proper to add, that the account of the _Midsummer’s Night’s Dream_ -has appeared in another work.[64] - - _April 15, 1817._ - - - - - CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS - - - CYMBELINE - -CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of Shakespear’s historical -plays. It may be considered as a dramatic romance, in which the most -striking parts of the story are thrown into the form of a dialogue, and -the intermediate circumstances are explained by the different speakers, -as occasion renders it necessary. The action is less concentrated in -consequence; but the interest becomes more aerial and refined from the -principle of perspective introduced into the subject by the imaginary -changes of scene, as well as by the length of time it occupies. The -reading of this play is like going a journey with some uncertain object -at the end of it, and in which the suspense is kept up and heightened by -the long intervals between each action. Though the events are scattered -over such an extent of surface, and relate to such a variety of -characters, yet the links which bind the different interests of the -story together are never entirely broken. The most straggling and -seemingly casual incidents are contrived in such a manner as to lead at -last to the most complete developement of the catastrophe. The ease and -conscious unconcern with which this is effected only makes the skill -more wonderful. The business of the plot evidently thickens in the last -act: the story moves forward with increasing rapidity at every step; its -various ramifications are drawn from the most distant points to the same -centre; the principal characters are brought together, and placed in -very critical situations; and the fate of almost every person in the -drama is made to depend on the solution of a single circumstance—the -answer of Iachimo to the question of Imogen respecting the obtaining of -the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson is of opinion that Shakespear was -generally inattentive to the winding-up of his plots. We think the -contrary is true; and we might cite in proof of this remark not only the -present play, but the conclusion of _Lear_, of _Romeo and Juliet_, of -_Macbeth_, of _Othello_, even of _Hamlet_, and of other plays of less -moment, in which the last act is crowded with decisive events brought -about by natural and striking means. - -The pathos in CYMBELINE is not violent or tragical, but of the most -pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender gloom overspreads the whole. -Posthumus is the ostensible hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is -the character of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the interest -she takes in him; and she is only interesting herself from her -tenderness and constancy to her husband. It is the peculiar excellence -of Shakespear’s heroines, that they seem to exist only in their -attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. We -think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are -let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are -too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, -except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection -of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength -of its affections for support, so well as Shakespear—no one ever so well -painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise—no one -else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to -extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; for the romance of his -heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual -prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant -to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego -the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this -respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. -They knew their own minds exactly; and only followed up a favourite -purpose, which they had sworn to with their tongues, and which was -engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the -prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record.—Cibber, in -speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want of prominence -and theatrical display in Shakespear’s female characters from the -circumstance, that women in those days were not allowed to play the -parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the -back-ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented -their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the -relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of -the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage-heroines; the -reverse of tragedy-queens. - -We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for -Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all Shakespear’s women she is -perhaps the most tender and the most artless. Her incredulity in the -opening scene with Iachimo, as to her husband’s infidelity, is much the -same as Desdemona’s backwardness to believe Othello’s jealousy. Her -answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, ‘My lord, I -fear, has forgot Britain.’ Her readiness to pardon Iachimo’s false -imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; -and may shew that where there is a real attachment to virtue, it has no -need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to -vice. The scene in which Pisanio gives Imogen his master’s letter, -accusing her of incontinency on the treacherous suggestions of Iachimo, -is as touching as it is possible for anything to be:— - - ‘_Pisanio._ What cheer, Madam? - - _Imogen._ False to his bed! What is it to be false? - To lie in watch there, and to think on him? - To weep ‘twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature, - To break it with a fearful dream of him, - And cry myself awake? That’s false to ‘s bed, is it? - - _Pisanio._ Alas, good lady! - - _Imogen._ I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo, - Thou didst accuse him of incontinency, - Thou then look’dst like a villain: now methinks, - Thy favour’s good enough. Some Jay of Italy, - Whose mother was her painting, hath betray’d him: - Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, - And for I am richer than to hang by th’ walls, - I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh, - Men’s vows are women’s traitors. All good seeming - By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought - Put on for villainy: not born where ‘t grows, - But worn a bait for ladies. - - _Pisanio._ Good Madam, hear me— - - _Imogen._ Talk thy tongue weary, speak: - I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear, - Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, - Nor tent to bottom that.’—— - -When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a -way to live, she says, - - ‘Why, good fellow, - What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? - Or in my life what comfort, when I am - Dead to my husband?’ - -Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy’s clothes, and -suggests ‘a course pretty and full in view,’ by which she may ‘happily -be near the residence of Posthumus,’ she exclaims— - - ‘Oh, for such means, - Though peril to my modesty, not death on ‘t, - I would adventure.’ - -And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must -change - - ——‘Fear and niceness, - The handmaids of all women, or more truly, - Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, - Ready in gibes, quick-answer’d, saucy, and - As quarrellous as the weazel’—— - -she interrupts him hastily— - - ‘Nay, be brief; - I see into thy end, and am almost - A man already.’ - -In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and -her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully— - - ——‘My dear lord, - Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee, - My hunger’s gone; but even before, I was - At point to sink for food.’ - -She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and -engages herself as a footboy to serve a Roman officer, when she has done -all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master— - - ——‘And when - With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strew’d his grave, - And on it said a century of pray’rs, - Such as I can, twice o’er, I ‘ll weep and sigh, - And leaving so his service, follow you, - So please you entertain me.’ - -Now this is the very religion of love. She all along relies little on -her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some -painted Jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the -depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty -is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There -are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and -one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her— - - ——‘With fairest flowers, - While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, - I’ll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack - The flow’r that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor - The azur’d hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor - The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, - Out-sweeten’d not thy breath.’ - -The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her -bedchamber:— - - ——‘Cytherea, - How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! Fresh lily, - And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch— - But kiss, one kiss—’Tis her breathing that - Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o’ th’ taper - Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids - To see th’ enclosed lights now canopied - Under the windows, white and azure, laced - With blue of Heav’n’s own tinct—on her left breast - A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops - I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip.’ - -There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich -surfeit of the fancy,—as that well-known passage beginning, ‘Me of my -lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,’ sets a -keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and -self-denial. - -The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby lord, and rejected lover -of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, -is drawn with much humour and quaint extravagance. The description which -Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her—‘Whose love-suit hath -been to me as fearful as a siege’—is enough to cure the most ridiculous -lover of his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten makes so poor a -figure in love, he is described as assuming an air of consequence as the -Queen’s son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity of his -person and manners, is not without shrewdness in his observations. So -true is it that folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments -as to a want of understanding! The exclamation of the ancient critic—Oh -Menander and Nature, which of you copied from the other! would not be -misapplied to Shakespear. - -The other characters in this play are represented with great truth and -accuracy, and as it happens in most of the author’s works, there is not -only the utmost keeping in each separate character; but in the casting -of the different parts, and their relation to one another, there is an -affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in the gradations of -colour in a picture. The striking and powerful contrasts in which -Shakespear abounds could not escape observation; but the use he makes of -the principle of analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities of -character and to maintain a continuity of feeling throughout, has not -been sufficiently attended to. In CYMBELINE, for instance, the principal -interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband -under the most trying circumstances. Now the other parts of the picture -are filled up with subordinate examples of the same feeling, variously -modified by different situations, and applied to the purposes of virtue -or vice. The plot is aided by the amorous importunities of Cloten, by -the persevering determination of Iachimo to conceal the defeat of his -project by a daring imposture: the faithful attachment of Pisanio to his -mistress is an affecting accompaniment to the whole; the obstinate -adherence to his purpose in Bellarius, who keeps the fate of the young -princes so long a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return to his -former services, the incorrigible wickedness of the Queen, and even the -blind uxorious confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines of the -same story, tending to the same point. The effect of this coincidence is -rather felt than observed; and as the impression exists unconsciously in -the mind of the reader, so it probably arose in the same manner in the -mind of the author, not from design, but from the force of natural -association, a particular train of thought suggesting different -inflections of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and -strengthening one another, like chords in music. - -The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, and the romantic -scenes in which they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and -artificial refinements of the court from which they are banished. -Nothing can surpass the wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of -the mountain life they lead. They follow the business of huntsmen, not -of shepherds; and this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure and -uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with the scenes in which they -are afterwards called on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and -impatience to emerge from their obscurity in the young princes is -opposed to the cooler calculations and prudent resignation of their more -experienced counsellor! How well the disadvantages of knowledge and of -ignorance, of solitude and society, are placed against each other! - - ‘_Guiderius._ Out of your proof you speak: we poor unfledg’d - Have never wing’d from view o’ th’ nest; nor know not - What air’s from home. Haply this life is best, - If quiet life is best; sweeter to you - That have a sharper known; well corresponding - With your stiff age: but unto us it is - A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed, - A prison for a debtor, that not dares - To stride a limit. - - _Arviragus._ What should we speak of - When we are old as you? When we shall hear - The rain and wind beat dark December! How, - In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse - The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing. - We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey, - Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat: - Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage - We make a quire, as doth the prison’d bird, - And sing our bondage freely.’ - -The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory; -for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the passion of the mind for -unknown good, but experience.—The forest of Arden in _As You Like It_ -can alone compare with the mountain scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how -different the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising -boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other! Shakespear not -only lets us into the minds of his characters, but gives a tone and -colour to the scenes he describes from the feelings of their supposed -inhabitants. He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of -action and passion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was -equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the -smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the -abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a -level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, -‘The game’s a-foot,’ etc.—with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise -upon at leisure, ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs.’ - -We cannot take leave of this play, which is a favourite with us, without -noticing some occasional touches of natural piety and morality. We may -allude here to the opening of the scene in which Bellarius instructs the -young princes to pay their orisons to heaven: - - ——‘See, boys! this gate - Instructs you how t’ adore the Heav’ns; and bows you - To morning’s holy office. - - _Guiderius._ Hail, Heav’n! - - _Arviragus._ Hail, Heav’n! - - _Bellarius._ Now for our mountain-sport, up to yon hill.’ - -What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety breathes in this passage! In -like manner, one of the brothers says to the other, when about to -perform the funeral rites to Fidele, - - ‘Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east; - My Father hath a reason for ‘t’— - -—as if some allusion to the doctrines of the Christian faith had been -casually dropped in conversation by the old man, and had been no farther -inquired into. - -Shakespear’s morality is introduced in the same simple, unobtrusive -manner. Imogen will not let her companions stay away from the chase to -attend her when sick, and gives her reason for it— - - ‘Stick to your journal course; _the breach of custom - Is breach of all_!’ - -When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives for procuring the poison -from Cornelius, by saying she means to try its effects on ‘creatures not -worth the hanging,’ his answer conveys at once a tacit reproof of her -hypocrisy, and a useful lesson of humanity— - - ——‘Your Highness - Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.’ - - - MACBETH - - ‘The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling - Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; - And as imagination bodies forth - The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen - Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing - A local habitation and a name.’ - -MACBETH and _Lear_, _Othello_ and _Hamlet_, are usually reckoned -Shakespear’s four principal tragedies. _Lear_ stands first for the -profound intensity of the passion; MACBETH for the wildness of the -imagination and the rapidity of the action; _Othello_ for the -progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling; _Hamlet_ for -the refined developement of thought and sentiment. If the force of -genius shewn in each of these works is astonishing, their variety is not -less so. They are like different creations of the same mind, not one of -which has the slightest reference to the rest. This distinctness and -originality is indeed the necessary consequence of truth and nature. -Shakespear’s genius alone appeared to possess the resources of nature. -He is ‘your only _tragedy-maker_.’ His plays have the force of things -upon the mind. What he represents is brought home to the bosom as a part -of our experience, implanted in the memory as if we had known the -places, persons, and things of which he treats. MACBETH is like a record -of a preternatural and tragical event. It has the rugged severity of an -old chronicle with all that the imagination of the poet can engraft upon -traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth, round which ‘the air smells -wooingly,’ and where ‘the temple-haunting martlet builds,’ has a real -subsistence in the mind; the Weïrd Sisters meet us in person on ‘the -blasted heath’; the ‘air-drawn dagger’ moves slowly before our eyes; the -‘gracious Duncan,’ the ‘blood-boultered Banquo’ stand before us; all -that passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, without the loss of a -tittle, through ours. All that could actually take place, and all that -is only possible to be conceived, what was said and what was done, the -workings of passion, the spells of magic, are brought before us with the -same absolute truth and vividness—Shakespear excelled in the openings of -his plays: that of MACBETH is the most striking of any. The wildness of -the scenery, the sudden shifting of the situations and characters, the -bustle, the expectations excited, are equally extraordinary. From the -first entrance of the Witches and the description of them when they meet -Macbeth, - - ——‘What are these - So wither’d and so wild in their attire, - That look not like the inhabitants of th’ earth - And yet are on’t?’ - -the mind is prepared for all that follows. - -This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it -displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the one is -made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming pressure of -preternatural agency urges on the tide of human passion with redoubled -force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence of his fate -like a vessel drifting before a storm: he reels to and fro like a -drunken man; he staggers under the weight of his own purposes and the -suggestions of others; he stands at bay with his situation; and from the -superstitious awe and breathless suspense into which the communications -of the Weïrd Sisters throw him, is hurried on with daring impatience to -verify their predictions, and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside -the veil which hides the uncertainty of the future. He is not equal to -the struggle with fate and conscience. He now ‘bends up each corporal -instrument to the terrible feat’; at other times his heart misgives him, -and he is cowed and abashed by his success. ‘The deed, no less than the -attempt, confounds him.’ His mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, -and full of ‘preternatural solicitings.’ His speeches and soliloquies -are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in -their labyrinths. In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and -desperate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His energy -springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing -forward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or his recoiling -from them, equally betrays the harassed state of his feelings.—This part -of his character is admirably set off by being brought in connection -with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and masculine -firmness give her the ascendancy over her husband’s faltering virtue. -She at once seizes on the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment -of all their wished-for greatness, and never flinches from her object -till all is over. The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the -magnitude of her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom -we fear more than we hate. She does not excite our loathing and -abhorrence like Regan and Gonerill. She is only wicked to gain a great -end; and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of -mind and inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her to be diverted -from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and womanly regrets, than -by the hardness of her heart or want of natural affections. The -impression which her lofty determination of character makes on the mind -of Macbeth is well described where he exclaims, - - ——‘Bring forth men children only; - For thy undaunted mettle should compose - Nothing but males!’ - -Nor do the pains she is at to ‘screw his courage to the sticking-place,’ -the reproach to him, not to be ‘lost so poorly in himself,’ the -assurance that ‘a little water clears them of this deed,’ show anything -but her greater consistency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition -furnishes ribs of steel to ‘the sides of his intent’; and she is herself -wound up to the execution of her baneful project with the same -unshrinking fortitude in crime, that in other circumstances she would -probably have shown patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice of -all other considerations to the gaining ‘for their future days and -nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom,’ by the murder of Duncan, is -gorgeously expressed in her invocation on hearing of ‘his fatal entrance -under her battlements’:— - - ——‘Come all you spirits - That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here: - And fill me, from the crown to th’ toe, top-full - Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, - Stop up the access and passage to remorse, - That no compunctious visitings of nature - Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between - The effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts, - And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, - Wherever in your sightless substances - You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night! - And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, - That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, - Nor heav’n peep through the blanket of the dark, - To cry, hold, hold!’—— - -When she first hears that ‘Duncan comes there to sleep’ she is so -overcome by the news, which is beyond her utmost expectations, that she -answers the messenger, ‘Thou’rt mad to say it’: and on receiving her -husband’s account of the predictions of the Witches, conscious of his -instability of purpose, and that her presence is necessary to goad him -on to the consummation of his promised greatness, she exclaims— - - ——‘Hie thee hither, - That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, - And chastise with the valour of my tongue - All that impedes thee from the golden round, - Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem - To have thee crowned withal.’ - -This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this uncontroulable -eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take -possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh and blood -display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, -gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally -instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of -mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. -They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from -their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are -themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences—who become sublime from -their exemption from all human sympathies and contempt for all human -affairs, as Lady Macbeth does by the force of passion! Her fault seems -to have been an excess of that strong principle of self-interest and -family aggrandisement, not amenable to the common feelings of compassion -and justice, which is so marked a feature in barbarous nations and -times. A passing reflection of this kind, on the resemblance of the -sleeping king to her father, alone prevents her from slaying Duncan with -her own hand. - -In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not to pass over -Mrs. Siddons’s manner of acting that part. We can conceive of nothing -grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being -of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world -with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, -passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she was tragedy -personified. In coming on in the sleeping-scene, her eyes were open, but -their sense was shut. She was like a person bewildered and unconscious -of what she did. Her lips moved involuntarily—all her gestures were -involuntary and mechanical. She glided on and off the stage like an -apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every -one’s life, not to be forgotten. - -The dramatic beauty of the character of Duncan, which excites the -respect and pity even of his murderers, has been often pointed out. It -forms a picture of itself. An instance of the author’s power of giving a -striking effect to a common reflection, by the manner of introducing it, -occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining of his having been deceived in -his opinion of the Thane of Cawdor, at the very moment that he is -expressing the most unbounded confidence in the loyalty and services of -Macbeth. - - ‘There is no art - To find the mind’s construction in the face: - He was a gentleman, on whom I built - An absolute trust. - O worthiest cousin, (_addressing himself to Macbeth_.) - The sin of my ingratitude e’en now - Was great upon me,’ etc. - -Another passage to show that Shakespear lost sight of nothing that could -in any way give relief or heightening to his subject, is the -conversation which takes place between Banquo and Fleance immediately -before the murder-scene of Duncan. - - ‘_Banquo._ How goes the night, boy? - - _Fleance._ The moon is down: I have not heard the clock. - - _Banquo._ And she goes down at twelve. - - _Fleance._ I take’t, ’tis later, Sir. - - _Banquo._ Hold, take my sword. There’s husbandry in heav’n, - Their candles are all out.— - A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, - And yet I would not sleep: Merciful Powers, - Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature - Gives way to in repose.’ - -In like manner, a fine idea is given of the gloomy coming on of evening, -just as Banquo is going to be assassinated. - - ‘Light thickens and the crow - Makes wing to the rooky wood.’ - - . . . . . - - ‘Now spurs the lated traveller apace - To gain the timely inn.’ - -MACBETH (generally speaking) is done upon a stronger and more systematic -principle of contrast than any other of Shakespear’s plays. It moves -upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and -death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a -huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of -them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent -end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a -determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the -height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every -passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle -against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of -strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. -Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest -bounds of nature and passion. This circumstance will account for the -abruptness and violent antitheses of the style, the throes and labour -which run through the expression, and from defects will turn them into -beauties. ‘So fair and foul a day I have not seen,’ etc. ‘Such welcome -and unwelcome news together.’ ‘Men’s lives are like the flowers in their -caps, dying or ere they sicken.’ ‘Look like the innocent flower, but be -the serpent under it.’ The scene before the castle-gate follows the -appearance of the Witches on the heath, and is followed by a midnight -murder. Duncan is cut off betimes by treason leagued with witchcraft, -and Macduff is ripped untimely from his mother’s womb to avenge his -death. Macbeth, after the death of Banquo, wishes for his presence in -extravagant terms, ‘To him and all we thirst,’ and when his ghost -appears, cries out, ‘Avaunt and quit my sight,’ and being gone, he is -‘himself again.’ Macbeth resolves to get rid of Macduff, that ‘he may -sleep in spite of thunder’; and cheers his wife on the doubtful -intelligence of Banquo’s taking-off with the encouragement—‘Then be thou -jocund: ere the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black -Hecate’s summons the shard-born beetle has rung night’s yawning peal, -there shall be done—a deed of dreadful note.’ In Lady Macbeth’s speech -‘Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t,’ there is -murder and filial piety together; and in urging him to fulfil his -vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the blood -neither of infants nor old age. The description of the Witches is full -of the same contradictory principle; they ‘rejoice when good kings -bleed,’ they are neither of the earth nor the air, but both; ‘they -should be women, but their beards forbid it’; they take all the pains -possible to lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition, only to -betray him ‘in deeper consequence,’ and after showing him all the pomp -of their art, discover their malignant delight in his disappointed -hopes, by that bitter taunt, ‘Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly?’ We -might multiply such instances every where. - -The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking enough, -and they form what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic -outline. By comparing it with other characters of the same author we -shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which is observed in the -midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Macbeth in -Shakespear no more loses his identity of character in the fluctuations -of fortune or the storm of passion, than Macbeth in himself would have -lost the identity of his person. Thus he is as distinct a being from -Richard III. as it is possible to imagine, though these two characters -in common hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, would have -been a repetition of the same general idea, more or less exaggerated. -For both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, -both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature -and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. -Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally -incapable of good. Macbeth is full of ‘the milk of human kindness,’ is -frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of guilt by -golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic -warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue and his -loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter, but wades through a -series of crimes to the height of his ambition from the ungovernable -violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay -but in the prospect or in the success of his villainies: Macbeth is full -of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with -difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse after its -perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common humanity in his -composition, no regard to kindred or posterity, he owns no fellowship -with others, he is ‘himself alone.’ Macbeth is not destitute of feelings -of sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the -dupe of his uxoriousness, ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial love -of his followers, and of his good name, among the causes which have made -him weary of life, and regrets that he has ever seized the crown by -unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity— - - ‘For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind— - For them the gracious Duncan have I murther’d, - To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings.’ - -In the agitation of his mind, he envies those whom he has sent to peace. -‘Duncan is in his grave; after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.’—It -is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges deeper in guilt, -‘direness is thus rendered familiar to his slaughterous thoughts,’ and -he in the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and bloodiness of his -enterprises, while she for want of the same stimulus of action, ‘is -troubled with thick-coming fancies that rob her of her rest,’ goes mad -and dies. Macbeth endeavours to escape from reflection on his crimes by -repelling their consequences, and banishes remorse for the past by the -meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle of Richard’s -cruelty, which displays the wanton malice of a fiend as much as the -frailty of human passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and -retaliation by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime.—There are -other decisive differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may -be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting, hardened knave, wholly -regardless of every thing but his own ends, and the means to secure -them.—Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of -society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and -imaginary grandeur to his character. From the strangeness of the events -that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear; and stands in doubt -between the world of reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not -shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and -disorder within and without his mind; his purposes recoil upon himself, -are broken and disjointed; he is the double thrall of his passions and -his evil destiny. Richard is not a character either of imagination or -pathos, but of pure self-will. There is no conflict of opposite feelings -in his breast. The apparitions which he sees only haunt him in his -sleep; nor does he live like Macbeth in a waking dream. Macbeth has -considerable energy and manliness of character; but then he is ‘subject -to all the skyey influences.’ He is sure of nothing but the present -moment. Richard in the busy turbulence of his projects never loses his -self-possession, and makes use of every circumstance that happens as an -instrument of his long-reaching designs. In his last extremity we can -only regard him as a wild beast taken in the toils: while we never -entirely lose our concern for Macbeth; and he calls back all our -sympathy by that fine close of thoughtful melancholy— - - ‘My way of life is fallen into the sear, - The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, - As honour, troops of friends, I must not look to have; - But in their stead, curses not loud but deep, - Mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart - Would fain deny, and dare not.’ - -We can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolerably well; we can -conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man that had -encountered the Weïrd Sisters. All the actors that we have ever seen, -appear as if they had encountered them on the boards of Covent-garden or -Drury-lane, but not on the heath at Fores, and as if they did not -believe what they had seen. The Witches of MACBETH indeed are ridiculous -on the modern stage, and we doubt if the Furies of Æschylus would be -more respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has an influence -on the stage, and will in time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. -Filch’s picking pockets in the _Beggar’s Opera_ is not so good a jest as -it used to be: by the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo’s -murders and the ghosts in Shakespear will become obsolete. At last, -there will be nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on -the theatre or in real life.—A question has been started with respect to -the originality of Shakespear’s Witches, which has been well answered by -Mr. Lamb in his notes to the ‘Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry.’ - - ‘Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in - MACBETH, and the incantations in this play (the Witch of Middleton), - which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not - detract much from the originality of Shakespear. His Witches are - distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential - differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman plotting some - dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those - originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the - moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth’s, he is spell-bound. - That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. - These Witches can hurt the body; those have power over the - soul.—Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon: the hags of - Shakespear have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended - from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence - they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they - are without human passions, so they seem to be without human - relations. They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy - music. This is all we know of them.—Except Hecate, they have no - names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of - the properties which Middleton has given to his hags, excite smiles. - The Weïrd Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist - with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are - fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. - They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, _like a thick scurf o’er - life_.’ - - - JULIUS CÆSAR - -JULIUS CÆSAR was one of three principal plays by different authors, -pitched upon by the celebrated Earl of Hallifax to be brought out in a -splendid manner by subscription, in the year 1707. The other two were -the _King and No King_ of Fletcher, and Dryden’s _Maiden Queen_. There -perhaps might be political reasons for this selection, as far as regards -our author. Otherwise, Shakespear’s JULIUS CÆSAR is not equal as a -whole, to either of his other plays taken from the Roman history. It is -inferior in interest to _Coriolanus_, and both in interest and power to -_Antony and Cleopatra_. It however abounds in admirable and affecting -passages, and is remarkable for the profound knowledge of character, in -which Shakespear could scarcely fail. If there is any exception to this -remark, it is in the hero of the piece himself. We do not much admire -the representation here given of Julius Cæsar, nor do we think it -answers to the portrait given of him in his Commentaries. He makes -several vapouring and rather pedantic speeches, and does nothing. -Indeed, he has nothing to do. So far, the fault of the character is the -fault of the plot. - -The spirit with which the poet has entered at once into the manners of -the common people, and the jealousies and heart-burnings of the -different factions, is shown in the first scene, where Flavius and -Marullus, tribunes of the people, and some citizens of Rome, appear upon -the stage. - - ‘_Flavius._ Thou art a cobler, art thou? - - _Cobler._ Truly, Sir, _all_ that I live by, is the _awl_. I - meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor woman’s matters, but - _with-al_, I am indeed, Sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they - are in great danger, I recover them. - - _Flavius._ But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day? - Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? - - _Cobler._ Truly, Sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself - into more work. But indeed, Sir, we make holiday to see Cæsar, - and rejoice in his triumph.’ - -To this specimen of quaint low humour immediately follows that -unexpected and animated burst of indignant eloquence, put into the mouth -of one of the angry tribunes. - - ‘_Marullus._ Wherefore rejoice!—What conquest brings he home? - What tributaries follow him to Rome, - To grace in captive-bonds his chariot-wheels? - Oh you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome! - Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft - Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements, - To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, - Your infants in your arms, and there have sat - The live-long day with patient expectation, - To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome: - And when you saw his chariot but appear, - Have you not made an universal shout, - That Tyber trembled underneath his banks - To hear the replication of your sounds, - Made in his concave shores? - And do you now put on your best attire? - And do you now cull out an holiday? - And do you now strew flowers in his way - That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? - Begone—— - Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, - Pray to the Gods to intermit the plague, - That needs must light on this ingratitude.’ - -The well-known dialogue between Brutus and Cassius, in which the latter -breaks the design of the conspiracy to the former, and partly gains him -over to it, is a noble piece of high-minded declamation. Cassius’s -insisting on the pretended effeminacy of Cæsar’s character, and his -description of their swimming across the Tiber together, ‘once upon a -raw and gusty day,’ are among the finest strokes in it. But perhaps the -whole is not equal to the short scene which follows, when Cæsar enters -with his train:— - - ‘_Brutus._ The games are done, and Cæsar is returning. - - _Cassius._ As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve, - And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you - What has proceeded worthy note to day. - - _Brutus._ I will do so; but look you, Cassius— - The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar’s brow, - And all the rest look like a chidden train. - Calphurnia’s cheek is pale; and Cicero - Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes, - As we have seen him in the Capitol, - Being crost in conference by some senators. - - _Cassius._ Casca will tell us what the matter is. - - _Cæsar._ Antonius—— - - _Antony._ Cæsar? - - _Cæsar._ Let me have men about me that are fat, - Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights: - Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, - He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. - - _Antony._ Fear him not, Cæsar, he’s not dangerous: - He is a noble Roman, and well given. - - _Cæsar._ Would he were fatter; but I fear him not: - Yet if my name were liable to fear, - I do not know the man I should avoid - So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much; - He is a great observer; and he looks - Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays, - As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music: - Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, - As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit, - That could be mov’d to smile at any thing. - Such men as he be never at heart’s ease, - Whilst they behold a greater than themselves; - And therefore are they very dangerous. - I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d - Than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar. - Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, - And tell me truly what thou think’st of him.’ - -We know hardly any passage more expressive of the genius of Shakespear -than this. It is as if he had been actually present, had known the -different characters and what they thought of one another, and had taken -down what he heard and saw, their looks, words, and gestures, just as -they happened. - -The character of Mark Antony is farther speculated upon where the -conspirators deliberate whether he shall fall with Cæsar. Brutus is -against it— - - ‘And for Mark Antony, think not of him: - For he can do no more than Cæsar’s arm, - When Cæsar’s head is off. - - _Cassius._ Yet I do fear him: - For in th’ ingrafted love he bears to Cæsar—— - - _Brutus._ Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him: - If he love Cæsar, all that he can do - Is to himself, take thought, and die for Cæsar: - And that were much, he should; for he is giv’n - To sports, to wildness, and much company. - - _Trebonius._ There is no fear in him; let him not die: - For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.’ - -They were in the wrong; and Cassius was right. - -The honest manliness of Brutus is however sufficient to find out the -unfitness of Cicero to be included in their enterprise, from his -affected egotism and literary vanity. - - ‘O, name him not: let us not break with him; - For he will never follow anything, - That other men begin.’ - -His scepticism as to prodigies and his moralising on the weather—‘This -disturbed sky is not to walk in’—are in the same spirit of refined -imbecility. - -Shakespear has in this play and elsewhere shown the same penetration -into political character and the springs of public events as into those -of every-day life. For instance, the whole design of the conspirators to -liberate their country fails from the generous temper and overweening -confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their cause and the assistance -of others. Thus it has always been. Those who mean well themselves think -well of others, and fall a prey to their security. That humanity and -honesty which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them -unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to -them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others, because -they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to reconcile the public good -with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to any -thing but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to -accomplish them. Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. His heart -prompted his head. His watchful jealousy made him fear the worst that -might happen, and his irritability of temper added to his inveteracy of -purpose, and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his motives -made him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices are never so well -employed as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are to be -dealt with after their own fashion: otherwise, they will triumph over -those who spare them, and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric, as -Antony did that of Brutus. - - ‘All the conspirators, save only he, - Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar: - He only in a general honest thought - And common good to all, made one of them.’ - -The quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is managed in a masterly way. The -dramatic fluctuation of passion, the calmness of Brutus, the heat of -Cassius, are admirably described; and the exclamation of Cassius on -hearing of the death of Portia, which he does not learn till after their -reconciliation, ‘How ‘scaped I killing when I crost you so?’ gives -double force to all that has gone before. The scene between Brutus and -Portia, where she endeavours to extort the secret of the conspiracy from -him, is conceived in the most heroical spirit, and the burst of -tenderness in Brutus— - - ‘You are my true and honourable wife; - As dear to me as are the ruddy drops - That visit my sad heart’— - -is justified by her whole behaviour. Portia’s breathless impatience to -learn the event of the conspiracy, in the dialogue with Lucius, is full -of passion. The interest which Portia takes in Brutus and that which -Calphurnia takes in the fate of Cæsar are discriminated with the nicest -precision. Mark Antony’s speech over the dead body of Cæsar has been -justly admired for the mixture of pathos and artifice in it: that of -Brutus certainly is not so good. - -The entrance of the conspirators to the house of Brutus at midnight is -rendered very impressive. In the midst of this scene, we meet with one -of those careless and natural digressions which occur so frequently and -beautifully in Shakespear. After Cassius has introduced his friends one -by one, Brutus says— - - ‘They are all welcome. - What watchful cares do interpose themselves - Betwixt your eyes and night? - - _Cassius._ Shall I entreat a word? (_They whisper._) - - _Decius._ Here lies the east: doth not the day break here? - - _Casca._ No. - - _Cinna._ O pardon, Sir, it doth; and yon grey lines, - That fret the clouds, are messengers of day. - - _Casca._ You shall confess, that you are both deceiv’d: - Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises, - Which is a great way growing on the south, - Weighing the youthful season of the year. - Some two months hence, up higher toward the north - He first presents his fire, and the high east - Stands as the Capitol, directly here.’ - -We cannot help thinking this graceful familiarity better than all the -fustian in the world.—The truth of history in JULIUS CÆSAR is very ably -worked up with dramatic effect. The councils of generals, the doubtful -turns of battles, are represented to the life. The death of Brutus is -worthy of him—it has the dignity of the Roman senator with the firmness -of the Stoic philosopher. But what is perhaps better than either, is the -little incident of his boy, Lucius, falling asleep over his instrument, -as he is playing to his master in his tent, the night before the battle. -Nature had played him the same forgetful trick once before on the night -of the conspiracy. The humanity of Brutus is the same on both occasions. - - ——‘It is no matter: - Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber. - Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, - Which busy care draws in the brains of men. - Therefore thou sleep’st so sound.’ - - - OTHELLO - -It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and -pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness. -It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond ourselves, in humanity -as such. It raises the great, the remote, and the possible to an -equality with the real, the little and the near. It makes man a partaker -with his kind. It subdues and softens the stubbornness of his will. It -teaches him that there are and have been others like himself, by showing -him as in a glass what they have felt, thought, and done. It opens the -chambers of the human heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that -can affect our common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting -the passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or -the temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in -ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes -to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of the -affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of life. It -is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity. The habitual -study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief part of a -well-grounded education. A taste for liberal art is necessary to -complete the character of a gentleman. Science alone is hard and -mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, -while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own -immediate, narrow interests.—OTHELLO furnishes an illustration of these -remarks. It excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree. The moral -it conveys has a closer application to the concerns of human life than -that of almost any other of Shakespear’s plays. ‘It comes directly home -to the bosoms and business of men.’ The pathos in _Lear_ is indeed more -dreadful and overpowering: but it is less natural, and less of every -day’s occurrence. We have not the same degree of sympathy with the -passions described in _Macbeth_. The interest in _Hamlet_ is more remote -and reflex. That of OTHELLO is at once equally profound and affecting. - -The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost as -remarkable as the depth of the passion. The Moor Othello, the gentle -Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured Cassio, the fool Roderigo, -present a range and variety of character as striking and palpable as -that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture. Their -distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind’s eye, so that even when -we are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the idea of their -persons is still as present to us as ever. These characters and the -images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder possible, the -distance between them is immense: yet the compass of knowledge and -invention which the poet has shown in embodying these extreme creations -of his genius is only greater than the truth and felicity with which he -has identified each character with itself, or blended their different -qualities together in the same story. What a contrast the character of -Othello forms to that of Iago! At the same time, the force of conception -with which these two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still -more intense by the complete consistency with which the traits of each -character are brought out in a state of the highest finishing. The -making one black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other -unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purposes of -effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of character. -Shakespear has laboured the finer shades of difference in both with as -much care and skill as if he had had to depend on the execution alone -for the success of his design. On the other hand, Desdemona and Æmilia -are not meant to be opposed with anything like strong contrast to each -other. Both are, to outward appearance, characters of common life, not -more distinguished than women usually are, by difference of rank and -situation. The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is however -laid open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain -and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands. - -The movement of the passion in Othello is exceedingly different from -that of Macbeth. In Macbeth there is a violent struggle between opposite -feelings, between ambition and the stings of conscience, almost from -first to last: in Othello, the doubtful conflict between contrary -passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time, and the -chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of different -passions, by the entire and unforeseen change from the fondest love and -most unbounded confidence to the tortures of jealousy and the madness of -hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it has once taken thorough -possession of his mind, never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger -at every moment of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble, -confiding, tender, and generous; but his blood is of the most -inflammable kind; and being once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he is -stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has given a -loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is in working -his noble nature up to this extremity through rapid but gradual -transitions, in raising passion to its height from the smallest -beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the expiring -conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy -and remorse, in unfolding the strength and the weakness of our nature, -in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in -putting in motion the various impulses that agitate this our mortal -being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and -sustained passion, impetuous but majestic, that ‘flows on to the -Propontic, and knows no ebb,’ that Shakespear has shown the mastery of -his genius and of his power over the human heart. The third act of -OTHELLO is his finest display, not of knowledge or passion separately, -but of the two combined, of the knowledge of character with the -expression of passion, of consummate art in the keeping up of -appearances with the profound workings of nature, and the convulsive -movements of uncontroulable agony, of the power of inflicting torture -and of suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion in Othello’s mind -heaved up from the very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest -undulation of feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises from the -impulses of imagination or the malicious suggestions of Iago. The -progressive preparation for the catastrophe is wonderfully managed from -the Moor’s first gallant recital of the story of his love, of ‘the -spells and witchcraft he had used,’ from his unlooked-for and romantic -success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness, -the unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her innocent importunities in -favour of Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her husband’s -mind by the perfidy of Iago, and rankling there to poison, till he loses -all command of himself, and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She -is introduced, just before Iago begins to put his scheme in practice, -pleading for Cassio with all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship and -winning confidence in the love of Othello. - - ‘What! Michael Cassio? - That came a wooing with you, and so many a time, - When I have spoke of you dispraisingly, - Hath ta’en your part, to have so much to do - To bring him in?—Why this is not a boon: - ’Tis as I should intreat you wear your gloves, - Or feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warm; - Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit - To your person. Nay, when I have a suit, - Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed, - It shall be full of poise, and fearful to be granted.’ - -Othello’s confidence, at first only staggered by broken hints and -insinuations, recovers itself at sight of Desdemona; and he exclaims - - ‘If she be false, O then Heav’n mocks itself: - I’ll not believe it.’ - -But presently after, on brooding over his suspicions by himself, and -yielding to his apprehensions of the worst, his smothered jealousy -breaks out into open fury, and he returns to demand satisfaction of Iago -like a wild beast stung with the envenomed shaft of the hunters. ‘Look -where he comes,’ etc. In this state of exasperation and violence, after -the first paroxysms of his grief and tenderness have had their vent in -that passionate apostrophe, ‘I felt not Cassio’s kisses on her lips,’ -Iago, by false aspersions, and by presenting the most revolting images -to his mind,[65] easily turns the storm of passion from himself against -Desdemona, and works him up into a trembling agony of doubt and fear, in -which he abandons all his love and hopes in a breath. - - ‘Now do I see ’tis true. Look here, Iago, - All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav’n. ’Tis gone. - Arise black vengeance from the hollow hell; - Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne - To tyrannous hate! Swell bosom with thy fraught; - For ’tis of aspicks’ tongues.’ - -From this time, his raging thoughts ‘never look back, ne’er ebb to -humble love,’ till his revenge is sure of its object, the painful -regrets and involuntary recollections of past circumstances which cross -his mind amidst the dim trances of passion, aggravating the sense of his -wrongs, but not shaking his purpose. Once indeed, where Iago shows him -Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and making sport (as he -thinks) of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, -the extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to praising her -accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of weakness, ‘Yet, oh -the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!’ This returning fondness however -only serves, as it is managed by Iago, to whet his revenge, and set his -heart more against her. In his conversations with Desdemona, the -persuasion of her guilt and the immediate proofs of her duplicity seem -to irritate his resentment and aversion to her; but in the scene -immediately preceding her death, the recollection of his love returns -upon him in all its tenderness and force; and after her death, he all at -once forgets his wrongs in the sudden and irreparable sense of his loss. - - ‘My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife. - Oh insupportable! Oh heavy hour!’ - -This happens before he is assured of her innocence; but afterwards his -remorse is as dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed -and death-like despair. His farewell speech, before he kills himself, in -which he conveys his reasons to the senate for the murder of his wife, -is equal to the first speech in which he gave them an account of his -courtship of her, and ‘his whole course of love.’ Such an ending was -alone worthy of such a commencement. - -If any thing could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or -compassion for his fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of his -nature, which so little deserve it. When Iago first begins to practise -upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers— - - ——‘’Tis not to make me jealous, - To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, - Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well; - Where virtue is, these are most virtuous. - Nor from my own weak merits will I draw - The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, - For she had eyes and chose me.’ - -This character is beautifully (and with affecting simplicity) confirmed -by what Desdemona herself says of him to Æmilia after she has lost the -handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to her. - - ‘Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse - Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor - Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness, - As jealous creatures are, it were enough - To put him to ill thinking. - - _Æmilia._ Is he not jealous? - - _Desdemona._ Who he? I think the sun where he was born - Drew all such humours from him.’ - -In a short speech of Æmilia’s, there occurs one of those -side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet -with but in Shakespear. After Othello has resolved upon the death of his -wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers, - - ‘I will, my Lord. - - _Æmilia._ How goes it now? _He looks gentler than he did._’ - -Shakespear has here put into half a line what some authors would have -spun out into ten set speeches. - -The character of Desdemona is inimitable both in itself, and as it -appears in contrast with Othello’s groundless jealousy, and with the -foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and -external graces are only indirectly glanced at: we see ‘her visage in -her mind’; her character every where predominates over her person. - - ‘A maiden never bold: - Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion - Blush’d at itself.’ - -There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio, who exclaims -triumphantly when she comes ashore at Cyprus after the storm, - - ‘Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, - As having sense of beauty, do omit - Their mortal natures, letting safe go by - The divine Desdemona.’ - -In general, as is the case with most of Shakespear’s females, we lose -sight of her personal charms in her attachment and devotedness to her -husband. ‘She is subdued even to the very quality of her lord’; and to -Othello’s ‘honours and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes -consecrates.’ The lady protests so much herself, and she is as good as -her word. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are -united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her -resolutions, the pertinacity of her affections, may be said to arise out -of the gentleness of her nature. They imply an unreserved reliance on -the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her fears to -her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. -Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical -and headstrong (though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted -for from her inability to resist a rising inclination[66]) her whole -character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her -obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and -practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to -the wars, she would gladly have ‘remained at home a moth of peace,’ if -her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic -sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which -she laments and tries to account for Othello’s estrangement from her are -exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her, and called her names, -she says, - - ——‘Alas, Iago, - What shall I do to win my lord again? - Good friend, go to him; for by this light of heaven, - I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel; - If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love, - Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed, - Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense - Delighted them on any other form; - Or that I do not, and ever did, - And ever will, though he do shake me off - To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly, - Comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much, - And his unkindness may defeat my life, - But never taint my love. - - _Iago._ I pray you be content: ’tis but his humour. - The business of the state does him offence. - - _Desdemona._ If ‘twere no other!—— - -The scene which follows with Æmilia and the song of the Willow, are -equally beautiful, and show the author’s extreme power of varying the -expression of passion, in all its moods and in all circumstances. - - ‘_Æmilia._ Would you had never seen him. - - _Desdemona._ So would not I: my love doth so approve him, - That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns, - Have grace and favour in them,’ etc. - -Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago’s unprovoked treachery, -place Desdemona in a more amiable or interesting light than the -conversation (half earnest, half jest) between her and Æmilia on the -common behaviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue takes place -just before the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard it, it would -have prevented the whole catastrophe; but then it would have spoiled the -play. - -The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespear’s -genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole -character unnatural, because his villainy is _without a sufficient -motive_. Shakespear, who was as good a philosopher as he was a poet, -thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name -for the love of mischief, is natural to man. He would know this as well -or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram, -merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for sport. -Iago in fact belongs to a class of character, common to Shakespear and -at the same time peculiar to him; whose heads are as acute and active as -their hearts are hard and callous. Iago is to be sure an extreme -instance of the kind; that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity, -with the most perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with -a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in -with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and -scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own -fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful -advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion—an -insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous -kind. ‘Our ancient’ is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills -has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a -fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching -the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the -ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in -the dark to prevent _ennui_. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the -success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on -others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and instead of -employing his invention on imaginary characters, or long-forgotten -incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up -his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends -and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady -nerves and unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or -two. - -One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after the -marriage of Othello. - - ‘_Roderigo._ What a full fortune does the thick lips owe, - If he can carry her thus! - - _Iago._ Call up her father: - Rouse him (_Othello_) make after him, poison his delight, - Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen, - And tho’ he in a fertile climate dwell, - Plague him with flies: tho’ that his joy be joy, - Yet throw such changes of vexation on it, - As it may lose some colour.’ - -In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is -plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real -enthusiasm. - - ‘_Roderigo._ Here is her father’s house: I’ll call aloud. - - _Iago._ Do, with like timourous accent and dire yell - As when, by night and negligence, the fire - Is spied in populous cities.’ - -One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in -descanting on which his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the -disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a clue to -the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It -is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs to it, when in -answer to his insinuations against Desdemona, Roderigo says, - - ‘I cannot believe that in her—she’s full of most blest conditions. - - _Iago._ Bless’d fig’s end. The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If - she had been blest, she would never have married the Moor.’ - -And again with still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when he -turns this very suggestion arising in Othello’s own breast to her -prejudice. - - ‘_Othello._ And yet how nature erring from itself— - - _Iago._ Ay, there’s the point;—as to be bold with you, - Not to affect many proposed matches - Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,’ etc. - -This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the character of poor -Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is certain that nothing but the -genius of Shakespear could have preserved the entire interest and -delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional elegance and -dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed.—The -habitual licentiousness of Iago’s conversation is not to be traced to -the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images, but to his desire -of finding out the worst side of everything, and of proving himself an -over-match for appearances. He has none of ‘the milk of human kindness’ -in his composition. His imagination rejects every thing that has not a -strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients; his mind digests -only poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever has the least ‘relish of -salvation in it,’ is, to his depraved appetite, sickly and insipid: and -he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if -it were an affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his -character. Thus at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he -exclaims—‘Oh, you are well tuned now: but I’ll set down the pegs that -make this music, _as honest as I am_‘—his character of _bonhomme_ not -sitting at all easy upon him. In the scenes, where he tries to work -Othello to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, -and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound -dissimulation and dextrous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the -third act, where he first enters upon the execution of his design. - - ‘_Iago._ My noble lord. - - _Othello._ What dost thou say, Iago? - - _Iago._ Did Michael Cassio, - When you woo’d my lady, know of your love? - - _Othello._ He did from first to last. - Why dost thou ask? - - _Iago._ But for a satisfaction of my thought, - No further harm. - - _Othello._ Why of thy thought, Iago? - - _Iago._ I did not think he had been acquainted with it. - - _Othello._ O yes, and went between us very oft— - - _Iago._ Indeed! - - _Othello._ Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught of that? - Is he not honest? - - _Iago._ Honest, my lord? - - _Othello._ Honest? Ay, honest. - - _Iago._ My lord, for aught I know. - - _Othello._ What do’st thou think? - - _Iago._ Think, my lord! - - _Othello._ Think, my lord! Alas, thou echo’st me, - As if there was some monster in thy thought - Too hideous to be shewn.’— - -The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask of -love and honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, and if -we may so say, the _passion_ of hypocrisy, marked in every line, receive -their last finishing in that inconceivable burst of pretended -indignation at Othello’s doubts of his sincerity. - - ‘O grace! O Heaven forgive me! - Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? - God be wi’ you; take mine office. O wretched fool, - That lov’st to make thine honesty a vice! - Oh monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! - To be direct and honest, is not safe. - I thank you for this profit, and from hence - I’ll love no friend, since love breeds such offence.’ - -If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all -his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we -only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello -falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical. - - ‘_Iago._ How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? - - _Othello._ Do’st thou mock me? - - _Iago._ I mock you not, by Heaven,’ etc. - -The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue -and generosity of the other characters in the play, but for its -indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, which divert the -attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he has in -view to the means by which it must be accomplished.—Edmund the Bastard -in _Lear_ is something of the same character, placed in less prominent -circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it. - - - TIMON OF ATHENS - -TIMON OF ATHENS always appeared to us to be written with as intense a -feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespear. It is one of the -few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout, never to trifle nor -go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of -the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which -spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as -a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to -be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic -Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of -Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling -impetuosity of the moral declamations in _Juvenal_, while the former -have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic -philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the -lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic -is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with -the soldier-like and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his -countrymen, who have banished him, though this forms only an incidental -episode in the tragedy. - -The fable consists of a single event;—of the transition from the highest -pomp and profusion of artificial refinement to the most abject state of -savage life, and privation of all social intercourse. The change is as -rapid as it is complete; nor is the description of the rich and generous -Timon, banqueting in gilded palaces, pampered by every luxury, prodigal -of his hospitality, courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, painters, -lords, ladies, who— - - ‘Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance, - Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear; - And through him drink the free air’— - -more striking than that of the sudden falling off of his friends and -fortune, and his naked exposure in a wild forest digging roots from the -earth for his sustenance, with a lofty spirit of self-denial, and bitter -scorn of the world, which raise him higher in our esteem than the -dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges himself the means of -life, and is only busy in preparing his grave. How forcibly is the -difference between what he was, and what he is, described in Apemantus’s -taunting questions, when he comes to reproach him with the change in his -way of life! - - ——‘What, think’st thou, - That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, - Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moist trees - That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, - And skip when thou point’st out? will the cold brook, - Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste - To cure thy o’er-night’s surfeit? Call the creatures, - Whose naked natures live in all the spight - Of wreakful heav’n, whose bare unhoused trunks, - To the conflicting elements expos’d, - Answer mere nature, bid them flatter thee.’ - -The manners are every where preserved with distinct truth. The poet and -painter are very skilfully played off against one another, both -affecting great attention to the other, and each taken up with his own -vanity, and the superiority of his own art. Shakespear has put into the -mouth of the former a very lively description of the genius of poetry -and of his own in particular. - - ——‘A thing slipt idly from me. - Our poesy is as a gum, which issues - From whence ’tis nourish’d. The fire i’ th’ flint - Shews not till it be struck: our gentle flame - Provokes itself—and like the current flies - Each bound it chafes.’ - -The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions of the Athenian lords, -their smooth professions and pitiful ingratitude, are very -satisfactorily exposed, as well as the different disguises to which the -meanness of self-love resorts in such cases to hide a want of generosity -and good faith. The lurking selfishness of Apemantus does not pass -undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the -pretensions of others. Even the two courtezans who accompany Alcibiades -to the cave of Timon are very characteristically sketched; and the -thieves who come to visit him are also ‘true men’ in their way.—An -exception to this general picture of selfish depravity is found in the -old and honest steward Flavius, to whom Timon pays a full tribute of -tenderness. Shakespear was unwilling to draw a picture ‘_ugly all over -with hypocrisy_.’ He owed this character to the good-natured -solicitations of his Muse. His mind might well have been said to be the -‘sphere of humanity.’ - -The moral sententiousness of this play equals that of Lord Bacon’s -Treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned with -greater variety. Every topic of contempt or indignation is here -exhausted; but while the sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which turns -every thing to gall and bitterness, shews only the natural virulence of -his temper and antipathy to good or evil alike, Timon does not utter an -imprecation without betraying the extravagant workings of disappointed -passion, of love altered to hate. Apemantus sees nothing good in any -object, and exaggerates whatever is disgusting: Timon is tormented with -the perpetual contrast between things and appearances, between the -fresh, tempting outside and the rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs -on the heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of his wrongs and of -their treacheries. He impatiently cries out, when he finds the gold, - - ‘This yellow slave - Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs’d; - Make the hoar leprosy ador’d; place thieves, - And give them title, knee, and approbation, - With senators on the bench; this is it, - That makes the wappen’d widow wed again; - She, whom the spital-house - Would cast the gorge at, _this embalms and spices - To th’ April day again_.’ - -One of his most dreadful imprecations is that which occurs immediately -on his leaving Athens. - - ‘Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, - That girdlest in those wolves! Dive in the earth, - And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent; - Obedience fail in children; slaves and fools - Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, - And minister in their steads. To general filths - Convert o’ th’ instant green virginity! - Do ‘t in your parents’ eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast; - Rather than render back, out with your knives, - And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal: - Large-handed robbers your grave masters are - And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed: - Thy mistress is o’ th’ brothel. Son of sixteen, - Pluck the lin’d crutch from thy old limping sire, - And with it beat his brains out! Fear and piety, - Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth, - Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, - Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, - Degrees, observances, customs and laws, - Decline to your confounding contraries; - And let confusion live!—Plagues, incident to men, - Your potent and infectious fevers heap - On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, - Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt - As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty - Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, - That ‘gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, - And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains, - Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms; and their crop - Be general leprosy: breath infect breath, - That their society (as their friendship) may - Be merely poison!’ - -Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for ill as he had been before -in his belief of good, Apemantus was satisfied with the mischief -existing in the world, and with his own ill-nature. One of the most -decisive intimations of Timon’s morbid jealousy of appearances is in his -answer to Apemantus, who asks him, - - ‘What things in the world can’st thou nearest compare with thy - flatterers? - - _Timon._ Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves.’ - -Apemantus, it is said, ‘loved few things better than to abhor himself.’ -This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself nor -others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced, up-hill work. From the -slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity, -he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. On that subject his -thoughts are intent, on that he finds time and place to grow romantic. -He digs his own grave by the sea-shore; contrives his funeral ceremonies -amidst the pomp of desolation, and builds his mausoleum of the elements. - - ‘Come not to me again; but say to Athens, - Timon hath made his everlasting mansion - Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; - Which once a-day with his embossed froth - The turbulent surge shall cover.—Thither come, - And let my grave-stone be your oracle.’ - -And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him, - - ‘These well express in thee thy latter spirits: - Though thou abhorred’st in us our human griefs, - Scorn’d’st our brain’s flow, and those our droplets, which - From niggard nature fall; yet rich conceit - Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye - On thy low grave’—— - -thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring -ocean; and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion of -the transitory splendour of his life-time. - - - CORIOLANUS - -Shakespear has in this play shewn himself well versed in history and -state-affairs. CORIOLANUS is a storehouse of political common-places. -Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke’s -Reflections, or Paine’s Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of -Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and -against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the -claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, -peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and -the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a -leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling -of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of -baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of -their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it.—The -cause of the people is indeed but little calculated as a subject for -poetry: it admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, -but it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind, ‘no jutting -frieze, buttress, or coigne of vantage’ for poetry ‘to make its pendant -bed and procreant cradle in.’ The language of poetry naturally falls in -with the language of power. The imagination is an exaggerating and -exclusive faculty: it takes from one thing to add to another: it -accumulates circumstances together to give the greatest possible effect -to a favourite object. The understanding is a dividing and measuring -faculty: it judges of things not according to their immediate impression -on the mind, but according to their relations to one another. The one is -a monopolising faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of present -excitement by inequality and disproportion; the other is a distributive -faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good, by justice -and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the other a republican -faculty. The principle of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It -aims at effect, it exists by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is -every thing by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard of -sufferings and crimes. It presents a dazzling appearance. It shows its -head turreted, crowned, and crested. Its front is gilt and -blood-stained. Before it ‘it carries noise, and behind it leaves tears.’ -It has its altars and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices. Kings, -priests, nobles, are its train-bearers, tyrants and slaves its -executioners.—‘Carnage is its daughter.’—Poetry is right-royal. It puts -the individual for the species, the one above the infinite many, might -before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is -a more poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly -beast, because our vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to -place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. So we feel some -concern for the poor citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare -their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and -big words drives this set of ‘poor rats,’ this rascal scum, to their -homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in a multitude -of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they -are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their -cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride -and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted -into contempt for their pusillanimity. The insolence of power is -stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to usurped -authority or even the natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or -flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or -oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We -had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in -ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: -the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in -pride, pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract -right.—Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the people: yet, the -instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he -turns his arms against his country. If his country was not worth -defending, why did he build his pride on its defence? He is a conqueror -and a hero; he conquers other countries, and makes this a plea for -enslaving his own; and when he is prevented from doing so, he leagues -with its enemies to destroy his country. He rates the people ‘as if he -were a God to punish, and not a man of their infirmity.’ He scoffs at -one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights and franchises: ‘Mark -you his absolute _shall_?’ not marking his own absolute _will_ to take -every thing from them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to his -own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If -the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, then all -this would have been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good -for the people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have -themselves, if they were seated above the world, sympathising with the -welfare, but not feeling the passions of men, receiving neither good nor -hurt from them, but bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them, they -might then rule over them like another Providence. But this is not the -case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the senate should shew their ‘cares’ -for the people, lest their ‘cares’ should be construed into ‘fears,’ to -the subversion of all due authority; and he is no sooner disappointed in -his schemes to deprive the people not only of the cares of the state, -but of all power to redress themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to -exclaim, - - ‘Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, - And occupations perish.’ - -This is but natural: it is but natural for a mother to have more regard -for her son than for a whole city; but then the city should be left to -take some care of itself. The care of the state cannot, we here see, be -safely entrusted to maternal affection, or to the domestic charities of -high life. The great have private feelings of their own, to which the -interests of humanity and justice must courtesy. Their interests are so -far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in -direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense -of _our_ weakness; their riches of _our_ poverty; their pride of _our_ -degradation; their splendour of _our_ wretchedness; their tyranny of -_our_ servitude. If they had the superior knowledge ascribed to them -(which they have not) it would only render them so much more formidable; -and from Gods would convert them into Devils. The whole dramatic moral -of CORIOLANUS is that those who have little shall have less, and that -those who have much shall take all that others have left. The people are -poor; therefore they ought to be starved. They are slaves; therefore -they ought to be beaten. They work hard; therefore they ought to be -treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant; therefore they ought -not to be allowed to feel that they want food, or clothing, or rest, -that they are enslaved, oppressed, and miserable. This is the logic of -the imagination and the passions; which seek to aggrandize what excites -admiration and to heap contempt on misery, to raise power into tyranny, -and to make tyranny absolute; to thrust down that which is low still -lower, and to make wretches desperate: to exalt magistrates into kings, -kings into gods; to degrade subjects to the rank of slaves, and slaves -to the condition of brutes. The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, -a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of _poetical justice_; it is -a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the -many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set -upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase though they do not share in -the spoil. We may depend upon it that what men delight to read in books, -they will put in practice in reality. - -One of the most natural traits in this play is the difference of the -interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by his wife and mother. The -one is only anxious for his honour; the other is fearful for his life. - - ‘_Volumnia._ Methinks I hither hear your husband’s drum: - I see him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair: - Methinks I see him stamp thus—and call thus— - Come on, ye cowards; ye were got in fear - Though you were born in Rome; his bloody brow - With his mail’d hand then wiping, forth he goes - Like to a harvest man, that’s task’d to mow - Or all, or lose his hire. - - _Virgilia._ His bloody brow! Oh Jupiter, no blood. - - _Volumnia._ Away, you fool; it more becomes a man - Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba, - When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier - Than Hector’s forehead, when it spit forth blood - At Grecian swords contending.’ - -When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son’s return, she says in -the true spirit of a Roman matron, - - ‘These are the ushers of Martius: before him - He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears. - Death, that dark spirit, in ‘s nervy arm doth lie, - Which being advanc’d, declines, and then men die.’ - -Coriolanus himself is a complete character: his love of reputation, his -contempt of popular opinion, his pride and modesty, are consequences of -each other. His pride consists in the inflexible sternness of his will; -his love of glory is a determined desire to bear down all opposition, -and to extort the admiration both of friends and foes. His contempt for -popular favour, his unwillingness to hear his own praises, spring from -the same source. He cannot contradict the praises that are bestowed upon -him; therefore he is impatient at hearing them. He would enforce the -good opinion of others by his actions, but does not want their -acknowledgments in words. - - ‘Pray now, no more: my mother, - Who has a charter to extol her blood, - When she does praise me, grieves me.’ - -His magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in an enemy that courage -which he honours in himself; he places himself on the hearth of Aufidius -with the same confidence that he would have met him in the field, and -feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes from him all -temptation for using it against him. - -In the title-page of CORIOLANUS, it is said at the bottom of the -_Dramatis Personæ_, ‘The whole history exactly followed, and many of the -principal speeches copied from the life of Coriolanus in Plutarch.’ It -will be interesting to our readers to see how far this is the case. Two -of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus and Aufidius and -between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given in Sir Thomas North’s -Translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, 1579. The first -is as follows:— - - ‘It was even twilight when he entered the city of Antium, and many - people met him in the streets, but no man knew him. So he went - directly to Tullus Aufidius’ house, and when he came thither, he got - him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and sat him down, and spake - not a word to any man, his face all muffled over. They of the house - spying him, wondered what he should be, and yet they durst not bid - him rise. For ill-favouredly muffled and disguised as he was, yet - there appeared a certain majesty in his countenance and in his - silence: whereupon they went to Tullus, who was at supper, to tell - him of the strange disguising of this man. Tullus rose presently - from the board, and coming towards him, asked him what he was, and - wherefore he came. Then Martius unmuffled himself, and after he had - paused awhile, making no answer, he said unto himself, If thou - knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhaps believe - me to be the man I am indeed, I must of necessity discover myself to - be that I am. “I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself - particularly, and to all the Volces generally, great hurt and - mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus that I - bear. For I never had other benefit nor recompence of the true and - painful service I have done, and the extreme dangers I have been in, - but this only surname: a good memory and witness of the malice and - displeasure thou shouldest bear me. Indeed the name only remaineth - with me; for the rest, the envy and cruelty of the people of Rome - have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobility and - magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the - people. This extremity hath now driven me to come as a poor suitor, - to take thy chimney-hearth, not of any hope I have to save my life - thereby. For if I had feared death, I would not have come hither to - put myself in hazard; but pricked forward with desire to be revenged - of them that thus have banished me, which now I do begin, in putting - my person into the hands of their enemies. Wherefore if thou hast - any heart to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done thee, - speed thee now, and let my misery serve thy turn, and so use it as - my service may be a benefit to the Volces: promising thee, that I - will fight with better good will for all you, than I did when I was - against you, knowing that they fight more valiantly who know the - force of the enemy, than such as have never proved it. And if it be - so that thou dare not, and that thou art weary to prove fortune any - more, then am I also weary to live any longer. And it were no wisdom - in thee to save the life of him who hath been heretofore thy mortal - enemy, and whose service now can nothing help, nor pleasure thee.” - Tullus hearing what he said, was a marvellous glad man, and taking - him by the hand, he said unto him: “Stand up, O Martius, and be of - good cheer, for in proffering thyself unto us, thou doest us great - honour: and by this means thou mayest hope also of greater things at - all the Volces’ hands.” So he feasted him for that time, and - entertained him in the honourablest manner he could, talking with - him of no other matter at that present: but within few days after, - they fell to consultation together in what sort they should begin - their wars.’ - -The meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is also nearly the same as -in the play. - - ‘Now was Martius set then in the chair of state, with all the - honours of a general, and when he had spied the women coming afar - off, he marvelled what the matter meant: but afterwards knowing his - wife which came foremost, he determined at the first to persist in - his obstinate and inflexible rancour. But overcome in the end with - natural affection, and being altogether altered to see them, his - heart would not serve him to tarry their coming to his chair, but - coming down in haste, he went to meet them, and first he kissed his - mother, and embraced her a pretty while, then his wife and little - children. And nature so wrought with him, that the tears fell from - his eyes, and he could not keep himself from making much of them, - but yielded to the affection of his blood, as if he had been - violently carried with the fury of a most swift-running stream. - After he had thus lovingly received them, and perceiving that his - mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him, he called the chiefest - of the council of the Volces to hear what she would say. Then she - spake in this sort: “If we held our peace, my son, and determined - not to speak, the state of our poor bodies, and present sight of our - raiment, would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home, - since thy exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself, how - much more unfortunate than all the women living, we are come hither, - considering that the sight which should be most pleasant to all - others to behold, spiteful fortune had made most fearful to us: - making myself to see my son, and my daughter here her husband, - besieging the walls of his native country: so as that which is the - only comfort to all others in their adversity and misery, to pray - unto the Gods, and to call to them for aid, is the only thing which - plungeth us into most deep perplexity. For we cannot, alas, together - pray, both for victory to our country, and for safety of thy life - also: but a world of grievous curses, yea more than any mortal enemy - can heap upon us, are forcibly wrapped up in our prayers. For the - bitter sop of most hard choice is offered thy wife and children, to - forego one of the two: either to lose the person of thyself, or the - nurse of their native country. For myself, my son, I am determined - not to tarry till fortune in my lifetime do make an end of this war. - For if I cannot persuade thee rather to do good unto both parties, - than to overthrow and destroy the one, preferring love and nature - before the malice and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, and - trust unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy - country, but thy foot shall tread upon thy mother’s womb, that - brought thee first into this world. And I may not defer to see the - day, either that my son be led prisoner in triumph by his natural - countrymen, or that he himself do triumph of them, and of his - natural country. For if it were so, that my request tended to save - thy country, in destroying the Volces, I must confess, thou wouldest - hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy thy natural - country, it is altogether unmeet and unlawful, so were it not just - and less honourable to betray those that put their trust in thee. - But my only demand consisteth, to make a goal delivery of all evils, - which delivereth equal benefit and safety, both to the one and the - other, but most honourable for the Volces. For it shall appear, that - having victory in their hands, they have of special favour granted - us singular graces, peace and amity, albeit themselves have no less - part of both than we. Of which good, if so it came to pass, thyself - is the only author, and so hast thou the only honour. But if it - fail, and fall out contrary, thyself alone deservedly shalt carry - the shameful reproach and burthen of either party. So, though the - end of war be uncertain, yet this notwithstanding is most certain, - that if it be thy chance to conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of - thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of - thy country. And if fortune overthrow thee, then the world will say, - that through desire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast for - ever undone thy good friends, who did most lovingly and courteously - receive thee.” Martius gave good ear unto his mother’s words, - without interrupting her speech at all, and after she had said what - she would, he held his peace a pretty while, and answered not a - word. Hereupon she began again to speak unto him, and said: “My son, - why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether to - give place unto thy choler and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou - it not honesty for thee to grant thy mother’s request in so weighty - a cause? Dost thou take it honourable for a nobleman to remember the - wrongs and injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an - honest nobleman’s part to be thankful for the goodness that parents - do shew to their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they - ought to bear unto them? No man living is more bound to shew himself - thankful in all parts and respects than thyself; who so universally - shewest all ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of - thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them, in revenge of the - injuries offered thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto shewed thy - poor mother any courtesy. And therefore, it is not only honest but - due unto me, that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and - reasonable request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade - thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope.” And with these - words, herself, his wife and children, fell down upon their knees - before him: Martius seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went - straight and lifted her up, crying out, “Oh mother, what have you - done to me?” And holding her hard by the hand, “Oh mother,” said he, - “you have won a happy victory for your country, but mortal and - unhappy for your son: for I see myself vanquished by you alone.” - These words being spoken openly, he spake a little apart with his - mother and wife, and then let them return again to Rome, for so they - did request him; and so remaining in the camp that night, the next - morning he dislodged, and marched homeward unto the Volces’ country - again.’ - -Shakespear has, in giving a dramatic form to this passage, adhered very -closely and properly to the text. He did not think it necessary to -improve upon the truth of nature. Several of the scenes in _Julius -Cæsar_, particularly Portia’s appeal to the confidence of her husband by -shewing him the wound she had given herself, and the appearance of the -ghost of Cæsar to Brutus, are in like manner, taken from the history. - - - TROILUS AND CRESSIDA - -This is one of the most loose and desultory of our author’s plays: it -rambles on just as it happens, but it overtakes, together with some -indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. -Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover: but -Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By -the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, -Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespear seems to have known them as well as if -he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy’s camp—to say -nothing of their affording very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. -The following is a very stately and spirited declamation: - - ‘_Ulysses._ Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down, - And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master, - But for these instances. - The specialty of rule hath been neglected. - - . . . . . - - The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, - Observe degree, priority, and place, - Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, - Office, and custom, in all line of order: - And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, - In noble eminence, enthron’d and spher’d - Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye - Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, - And posts, like the commandment of a king, - Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets, - In evil mixture to disorder wander, - What plagues, and what portents? what mutinies? - What raging of the sea? shaking of the earth? - Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors, - Divert and crack, rend and deracinate - The unity and married calm of states - Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken, - (Which is the ladder to all high designs) - The enterprize is sick! How could communities, - Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, - Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, - The primogenitive and due of birth, - Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, - (But by degree) stand in authentic place? - Take but degree away, untune that string, - And hark what discord follows! each thing meets - In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters - Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores, - And make a sop of all this solid globe: - Strength would be the lord of imbecility, - And the rude son would strike his father dead: - Force would be right; or rather right and wrong - (Between whose endless jar Justice resides) - Would lose their names, and so would Justice too. - Then every thing includes itself in power, - Power into will, will into appetite; - And appetite (an universal wolf, - So doubly seconded with will and power) - Must make perforce an universal prey, - And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, - This chaos, when degree is suffocate, - Follows the choking: - And this neglection of degree it is, - That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose - It hath to climb. The general’s disdained - By him one step below; he, by the next; - That next, by him beneath: so every step, - Exampled by the first pace that is sick - Of his superior, grows to an envious fever - Of pale and bloodless emulation; - And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, - Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, - Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.’ - -It cannot be said of Shakespear, as was said of some one, that he was -‘without o’erflowing full.’ He was full, even to o’erflowing. He gave -heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only -in danger ‘of losing distinction in his thoughts’ (to borrow his own -expression) - - ‘As doth a battle when they charge on heaps - The enemy flying.’ - -There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, shewing him -the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of -moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. It is -long, but worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire argument -from the unacted plays of our author may with one class of readers have -almost the use of restoring a lost passage; and may serve to convince -another class of critics, that the poet’s genius was not confined to the -production of stage effect by preternatural means.— - - ‘_Ulysses._ Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, - Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion; - A great-siz’d monster of ingratitudes: - Those scraps are good deeds past, - Which are devour’d as fast as they are made, - Forgot as soon as done. Persev`rance, dear my lord, - Keeps Honour bright: to have done, is to hang - Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail - In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; - For Honour travels in a strait so narrow, - Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path, - For Emulation hath a thousand sons, - That one by one pursue; if you give way, - Or hedge aside from the direct forth right, - Like to an entered tide, they all rush by, - And leave you hindmost;—— - Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank, - O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, - Tho’ less than yours in past must o’ertop yours: - For Time is like a fashionable host, - That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand, - And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly, - Grasps in the comer: the welcome ever smiles, - And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek - Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, - High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, - Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all - To envious and calumniating time: - One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. - That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, - Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past. - The present eye praises the present object. - Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, - That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax; - Since things in motion sooner catch the eye, - Than what not stirs. The cry went out on thee, - And still it might, and yet it may again, - If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive, - And case thy reputation in thy tent.’ - -The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they -sometimes jostle against one another, they every where raise and carry -on the feeling, which is intrinsically true and profound. The debates -between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of -knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus enters well into the -philosophy of war, when he says in answer to something that falls from -Hector, - - ‘Why there you touch’d the life of our design: - Were it not glory that we more affected, - Than the performance of our heaving spleens, - I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood - Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, - She is a theme of honour and renown, - A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds.’ - -The character of Hector, in a few slight indications which appear of it, -is made very amiable. His death is sublime, and shews in a striking -light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of -Achilles are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with them. - - ‘Come here about me, you my myrmidons, - Mark what I say.—Attend me where I wheel: - Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath; - And when I have the bloody Hector found, - Empale him with your weapons round about, - In fellest manner execute your arms. - Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye.’ - -He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he had been hunting down a -wild beast. There is something revolting as well as terrific in the -ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey: nor does the -splendour of the achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means. - -The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very amusing and -instructive. The disinterested willingness of Pandarus to serve his -friend in an affair which lies next his heart is immediately brought -forward. ‘Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, -or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable -man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would -give money to boot.’ This is the language he addresses to his niece: nor -is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and -fluttering as her heart. ‘It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her -breath so short as a new-ta’en sparrow.’ Both characters are originals, -and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida -is represented as a grave, sober, considerate personage (a widow—he -cannot tell her age, nor whether she has children or no) who has an -alternate eye to her character, her interest, and her pleasure: -Shakespear’s Cressida is a giddy girl, an unpractised jilt, who falls in -love with Troilus, as she afterwards deserts him, from mere levity and -thoughtlessness of temper. She may be wooed and won to any thing and -from any thing, at a moment’s warning; the other knows very well what -she would be at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial -reasons than by caprice or vanity. Pandarus again, in Chaucer’s story, -is a friendly sort of go-between, tolerably busy, officious, and forward -in bringing matters to bear: but in Shakespear he has ‘a stamp exclusive -and professional’: he wears the badge of his trade; he is a regular -knight of the game. The difference of the manner in which the subject is -treated arises perhaps less from intention, than from the different -genius of the two poets. There is no _double entendre_ in the characters -of Chaucer: they are either quite serious or quite comic. In Shakespear -the ludicrous and ironical are constantly blended with the stately and -the impassioned. We see Chaucer’s characters as they saw themselves, not -as they appeared to others or might have appeared to the poet. He is as -deeply implicated in the affairs of his personages as they could be -themselves. He had to go a long journey with each of them, and became a -kind of necessary confidant. There is little relief, or light and shade -in his pictures. The conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow -of grief or impatience. Every thing with him is intense and continuous—a -working out of what went before.—Shakespear never committed himself to -his characters. He trifled, laughed, or wept with them as he chose. He -has no prejudices for or against them; and it seems a matter of perfect -indifference whether he shall be in jest or earnest. According to him -‘the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.’ His -genius was dramatic, as Chaucer’s was historical. He saw both sides of a -question, the different views taken of it according to the different -interests of the parties concerned, and he was at once an actor and -spectator in the scene. If any thing, he is too various and flexible: -too full of transitions, of glancing lights, of salient points. If -Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespear was too -volatile and heedless. The Muse’s wing too often lifted him from off his -feet. He made infinite excursions to the right and the left. - - ——‘He hath done - Mad and fantastic execution, - Engaging and redeeming of himself - With such a careless force and forceless care, - As if that luck in very spite of cunning - Bad him win all.’ - -Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural, that is, to the -involuntary and inevitable impressions on the mind in given -circumstances; Shakespear exhibited also the possible and the -fantastical,—not only what things are in themselves, but whatever they -might seem to be, their different reflections, their endless -combinations. He lent his fancy, wit, invention, to others, and borrowed -their feelings in return. Chaucer excelled in the force of habitual -sentiment; Shakespear added to it every variety of passion, every -suggestion of thought or accident. Chaucer described external objects -with the eye of a painter, or he might be said to have embodied them -with the hand of a sculptor, every part is so thoroughly made out, and -tangible:—Shakespear’s imagination threw over them a lustre - - —‘Prouder than when blue Iris bends.’ - -Every thing in Chaucer has a downright reality. A simile or a sentiment -is as if it were given in upon evidence. In Shakespear the commonest -matter-of-fact has a romantic grace about it; or seems to float with the -breath of imagination in a freer element. No one could have more depth -of feeling or observation than Chaucer, but he wanted resources of -invention to lay open the stores of nature or the human heart with the -same radiant light that Shakespear has done. However fine or profound -the thought, we know what is coming, whereas the effect of reading -Shakespear is ‘like the eye of vassalage at unawares encountering -majesty.’ Chaucer’s mind was consecutive, rather than discursive. He -arrived at truth through a certain process; Shakespear saw every thing -by intuition. Chaucer had a great variety of power, but he could do only -one thing at once. He set himself to work on a particular subject. His -ideas were kept separate, labelled, ticketed and parcelled out in a set -form, in pews and compartments by themselves. They did not play into one -another’s hands. They did not re-act upon one another, as the blower’s -breath moulds the yielding glass. There is something hard and dry in -them. What is the most wonderful thing in Shakespear’s faculties is -their excessive sociability, and how they gossiped and compared notes -together. - -We must conclude this criticism; and we will do it with a quotation or -two. One of the most beautiful passages in Chaucer’s tale is the -description of Cresseide’s first avowal of her love. - - ‘And as the new abashed nightingale, - That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, - When that she heareth any herde’s tale, - Or in the hedges any wight stirring, - And, after, sicker doth her voice outring; - Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent, - Opened her heart, and told him her intent.’ - -See also the two next stanzas, and particularly that divine one -beginning— - - ‘Her armes small, her back both straight and soft,’ etc. - -Compare this with the following speech of Troilus to Cressida in the -play:— - - ‘O, that I thought it could be in a woman; - And if it can, I will presume in you, - To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love, - To keep her constancy in plight and youth, - Out-living beauties outward, with a mind - That doth renew swifter than blood decays. - Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me, - That my integrity and truth to you - Might be affronted with the match and weight - Of such a winnow’d purity in love; - How were I then uplifted! But alas, - I am as true as Truth’s simplicity, - And simpler than the infancy of Truth.’ - -These passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though -we think they are so. We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. -Patroclus says to Achilles, - - ——‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid - Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, - And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane, - Be shook to air.’ - -Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of the morning that -parts him from Cressida, says with much scorn, - - ‘What! proffer’st thou thy light here for to sell? - Go sell it them that smallé selés grave.’ - -If nobody but Shakespear could have written the former, nobody but -Chaucer would have thought of the latter.—Chaucer was the most literal -of poets, as Richardson was of prose-writers. - - - ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA - -This is a very noble play. Though not in the first class of Shakespear’s -productions, it stands next to them, and is, we think, the finest of his -historical plays, that is, of those in which he made poetry the organ of -history, and assumed a certain tone of character and sentiment, in -conformity to known facts, instead of trusting to his observations of -general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy. What he -has added to the actual story, is upon a par with it. His genius was, as -it were, a match for history as well as nature, and could grapple at -will with either. The play is full of that pervading comprehensive power -by which the poet could always make himself master of time and -circumstances. It presents a fine picture of Roman pride and Eastern -magnificence: and in the struggle between the two, the empire of the -world seems suspended, ‘like the swan’s down-feather, - - ‘That stands upon the swell at full of tide, - And neither way inclines.’ - -The characters breathe, move, and live. Shakespear does not stand -reasoning on what his characters would do or say, but at once _becomes_ -them, and speaks and acts for them. He does not present us with groups -of stage-puppets or poetical machines making set speeches on human life, -and acting from a calculation of problematical motives, but he brings -living men and women on the scene, who speak and act from real feelings, -according to the ebbs and flows of passion, without the least tincture -of pedantry of logic or rhetoric. Nothing is made out by inference and -analogy, by climax and antithesis, but every thing takes place just as -it would have done in reality, according to the occasion.—The character -of Cleopatra is a master-piece. What an extreme contrast it affords to -Imogen! One would think it almost impossible for the same person to have -drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her -charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and gorgeous -extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in all their force and -lustre, as well as the irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. -Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the -regal style of love-making. - - ‘_Cleopatra._ If it be love indeed, tell me how much? - - _Antony._ There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d. - - _Cleopatra._ I’ll set a bourn how far to be belov’d. - - _Antony._ Then must thou needs find out new heav’n, new earth.’ - -The rich and poetical description of her person beginning— - - ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, - Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold, - Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that - The winds were love-sick’— - -seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent -infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the -battle, and ‘like a doating mallard’ follows her flying sails. - -Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author -like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character -than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what -were the employments of Antony in his absence—‘He’s speaking now, or -murmuring—_Where’s my serpent of old Nile?_’ Or again, when she says to -Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning up resolution to -risk another fight—‘It is my birthday; I had thought to have held it -poor; but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ Perhaps -the finest burst of all is Antony’s rage after his final defeat when he -comes in, and surprises the messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand— - - ‘To let a fellow that will take rewards, - And say God quit you, be familiar with, - My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal, - And plighter of high hearts.’ - -It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but his low condition -is not the true reason: there is another feeling which lies deeper, -though Antony’s pride would not let him shew it, except by his rage; he -suspects the fellow to be Cæsar’s proxy. - -Cleopatra’s whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the -love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other -consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and -shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her— - - ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal - Her infinite variety. Other women cloy - The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry - Where most she satisfies.’ - -What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony’s messenger who -brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the -pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to -him— - - ——‘There’s gold, and here - My bluest veins to kiss!’— - -She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death -almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength -of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, -and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She -tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with -fondness— - - ‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, - That sucks the nurse asleep? - As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. - Oh Antony!’ - -It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has contrasted the extreme -magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme -suffering and physical horror, not less striking—partly perhaps to place -the effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable light, and -at the same time to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. -Cæsar says, hearing of his rival’s conduct at the court of Cleopatra, - - ——‘Antony, - Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou once - Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew’st - Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel - Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against, - Though daintily brought up, with patience more - Than savages could suffer. Thou did’st drink - The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle - Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign - The roughest berry on the rudest hedge, - Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, - The barks of trees thou browsed’st. On the Alps, - It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh, - Which some did die to look on: and all this, - It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now, - Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek - So much as lank’d not.’ - -The passage after Antony’s defeat by Augustus, where he is made to say— - - ‘Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept - His sword e’en like a dancer; while I struck - The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I - That the mad Brutus ended’— - -is one of those fine retrospections which show us the winding and -eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has been paid -to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of -perspective in the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from -distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from -long-cherished passion; and contrasts our view of life from a strange -and romantic dream, long, obscure, and infinite, into a smartly -contested, three hours’ inaugural disputation on its merits by the -different candidates for theatrical applause. - -The latter scenes of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA are full of the changes of -accident and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with -startling rapidity. Fortune sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy -than usual. This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his -greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros. - - ‘_Antony._ Eros, thou yet behold’st me? - - _Eros._ Ay, noble lord. - - _Antony._ Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, - A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, - A towered citadel, a pendant rock, - A forked mountain, or blue promontory - With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world - And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, - They are black vesper’s pageants. - - _Eros._ Ay, my lord. - - _Antony._ That which is now a horse, even with a thought - The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct - As water is in water. - - _Eros._ It does, my lord. - - _Antony._ My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is - Even such a body,’ etc. - -This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in -Shakespear. The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the -lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over the world, their -evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of what is left behind, are -just like the mouldering schemes of human greatness. It is finer than -Cleopatra’s passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur, because it -is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial. Antony’s headstrong presumption -and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopatra’s wishes to fight by -sea instead of land, meet a merited punishment; and the extravagance of -his resolutions, increasing with the desperateness of his circumstances, -is well commented upon by Œnobarbus. - - ——‘I see men’s judgments are - A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward - Do draw the inward quality after them - To suffer all alike.’ - -The repentance of Œnobarbus after his treachery to his master is the -most affecting part of the play. He cannot recover from the blow which -Antony’s generosity gives him, and he dies broken-hearted, ‘a -master-leaver and a fugitive.’ - -Shakespear’s genius has spread over the whole play a richness like the -overflowing of the Nile. - - - HAMLET - -This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, and whom we -may be said almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that -famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice to the players, who -thought ‘this goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this -brave o’er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted with -golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’; whom ‘man -delighted not, nor woman neither’; he who talked with the grave-diggers, -and moralised on Yorick’s skull; the school-fellow of Rosencraus and -Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; -he that was mad and sent to England; the slow avenger of his father’s -death; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years before -we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we do -our own, because we have read them in Shakespear. - -Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the -poet’s brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own -thoughts. Their reality is in the reader’s mind. It is _we_ who are -Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. -Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or -those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of -reflection, and thought himself ‘too much i’ th’ sun’; whoever has seen -the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, -and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing -left remarkable in it; whoever has known ‘the pangs of despised love, -the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the -unworthy takes’; he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness -cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his -youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well -at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose -powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe -seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him -careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to -shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock -representation of them—this is the true Hamlet. - -We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to -criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our own faces. -But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of -Shakespear’s plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds -most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses -of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general -account of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, -because he applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is -a great moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is, that he -moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is not a common-place -pedant. If _Lear_ is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, -HAMLET is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and -unstudied developement of character. Shakespear had more magnanimity -than any other poet, and he has shewn more of it in this play than in -any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: every thing is left -for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without -effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the -characters think and speak and act just as they might do, if left -entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a -point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene—the gusts of -passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole -play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken -place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, -before the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It -would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a by-stander -in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something -of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not -only ‘the outward pageants and the signs of grief’; but ‘we have that -within which passes shew.’ We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch -the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very -fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but Shakespear, together with -his own comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for -ourselves. This is a very great advantage. - -The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character -marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of -thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well -be: but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and -quick sensibility—the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune -and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of -his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable -of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur -of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where -he kills Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters which -Rosencraus and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting -his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains -puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the -occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence -and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King -when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in -truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge -to a more fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act ‘that -has no relish of salvation in it.’ - - ‘He kneels and prays, - And now I’ll do’t, and so he goes to heaven, - And so am I reveng’d: _that would be scann’d_. - He kill’d my father, and for that, - I, his sole son, send him to heaven. - Why this is reward, not revenge. - Up sword and know thou a more horrid time, - When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage.’ - -He is the prince of philosophical speculators; and because he cannot -have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish -can form, he declines it altogether. So he scruples to trust the -suggestions of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer -proof of his uncle’s guilt, and then rests satisfied with this -confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, -instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes -himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. - - ‘How all occasions do inform against me, - And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, - If his chief good and market of his time - Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more. - Sure he that made us with such large discourse, - Looking before and after, gave us not - That capability and god-like reason - To rust in us unus’d. Now whether it be - Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple - Of thinking too precisely on th’ event,— - A thought which quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom, - And ever three parts coward;—I do not know - Why yet I live to say, this thing’s to do; - Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means - To do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me: - Witness this army of such mass and charge, - Led by a delicate and tender prince, - Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d, - Makes mouths at the invisible event, - Exposing what is mortal and unsure - To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, - Even for an egg-shell. ’Tis not to be great - Never to stir without great argument; - But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, - When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then, - That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d, - Excitements of my reason and my blood, - And let all sleep, while to my shame I see - The imminent death of twenty thousand men, - That for a fantasy and trick of fame, - Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot - Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, - Which is not tomb enough and continent - To hide the slain?—O, from this time forth, - My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.’ - -Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his own infirmity -only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any -want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that -Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his -imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on -his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His -ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretext that -flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous -purposes. - -The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we -think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than -according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical -delineations of ‘that noble and liberal casuist’ (as Shakespear has been -well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured Quakerism of morality. His -plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The -Academy of Compliments! We confess we are a little shocked at the want -of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in -Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either -partakes of the ‘licence of the time,’ or else belongs to the very -excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the -common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. -He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, -and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as -much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His -habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the -time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It -is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, -of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the -distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and -preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy -from carrying on a regular courtship. When ‘his father’s spirit was in -arms,’ it was not a time for the son to make love in. He could neither -marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his -alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would -have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. -In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much otherwise -than he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees -her funeral, - - ‘I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers - Could not with all their quantity of love - Make up my sum.’ - -Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen’s apostrophe -to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave. - - ——‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell. - I hop’d thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife: - I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid, - And not have strew’d thy grave.’ - -Shakespear was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of human -character, and he here shews us the Queen, who was so criminal in some -respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of -life.—Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt -upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, -her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and -pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakespear could have drawn -in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not -even the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic -ballads.[67] Her brother, Laertes, is a character we do not like so -well: he is too hot and choleric, and somewhat rhodomontade. Polonius is -a perfect character in its kind; nor is there any foundation for the -objections which have been made to the consistency of this part. It is -said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no -inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time and -foolishly at another; that his advice to Laertes is very excellent, and -his advice to the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet’s madness very -ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he -gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accordingly -officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, Shakespear has been -accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because he -has kept up the distinction which there is in nature, between the -understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of -their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, -but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, -comes under the head of impropriety of intention. - -We do not like to see our author’s plays acted, and least of all, -HAMLET. There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to -the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted. Mr. -Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want of ease and -variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines; it has -the yielding flexibility of ‘a wave o’ th’ sea.’ Mr. Kemble plays it -like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one -undeviating straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and -refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt -starts which Mr. Kean introduces into the part. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet is as -much too splenetic and rash as Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and -formal. His manner is too strong and pointed. He throws a severity, -approaching to virulence, into the common observations and answers. -There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in his -reflections, and only _thinks aloud_. There should therefore be no -attempt to impress what he says upon others by a studied exaggeration of -emphasis or manner; no _talking at_ his hearers. There should be as much -of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part, and as -little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit reluctantly -upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full -of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He -is the most amiable of misanthropes. - - - THE TEMPEST - -There can be little doubt that Shakespear was the most universal genius -that ever lived. ‘Either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, -pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem -unlimited, he is the only man. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus -too light for him.’ He has not only the same absolute command over our -laughter and our tears, all the resources of passion, of wit, of -thought, of observation, but he has the most unbounded range of fanciful -invention, whether terrible or playful, the same insight into the world -of imagination that he has into the world of reality; and over all there -presides the same truth of character and nature, and the same spirit of -humanity. His ideal beings are as true and natural as his real -characters; that is, as consistent with themselves, or if we suppose -such beings to exist at all, they could not act, speak, or feel -otherwise than as he makes them. He has invented for them a language, -manners, and sentiments of their own, from the tremendous imprecations -of the Witches in _Macbeth_, when they do ‘a deed without a name,’ to -the sylph-like expressions of Ariel, who ‘does his spiriting gently’; -the mischievous tricks and gossipping of Robin Goodfellow, or the -uncouth gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in this play. - -The TEMPEST is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespear’s -productions, and he has shewn in it all the variety of his powers. It is -full of grace and grandeur. The human and imaginary characters, the -dramatic and the grotesque, are blended together with the greatest art, -and without any appearance of it. Though he has here given ‘to airy -nothing a local habitation and a name,’ yet that part which is only the -fantastic creation of his mind, has the same palpable texture, and -coheres ‘semblably’ with the rest. As the preternatural part has the air -of reality, and almost haunts the imagination with a sense of truth, the -real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream. The -stately magician, Prospero, driven from his dukedom, but around whom (so -potent is his art) airy spirits throng numberless to do his bidding; his -daughter Miranda (‘worthy of that name’) to whom all the power of his -art points, and who seems the goddess of the isle; the princely -Ferdinand, cast by fate upon the haven of his happiness in this idol of -his love; the delicate Ariel; the savage Caliban, half brute, half -demon; the drunken ship’s crew—are all connected parts of the story, and -can hardly be spared from the place they fill. Even the local scenery is -of a piece and character with the subject. Prospero’s enchanted island -seems to have risen up out of the sea; the airy music, the tempest-tost -vessel, the turbulent waves, all have the effect of the landscape -background of some fine picture. Shakespear’s pencil is (to use an -allusion of his own) ‘like the dyer’s hand, subdued to what it works -in.’ Every thing in him, though it partakes of ‘the liberty of wit,’ is -also subjected to ‘the law’ of the understanding. For instance, even the -drunken sailors, who are made reeling-ripe, share, in the disorder of -their minds and bodies, in the tumult of the elements, and seem on shore -to be as much at the mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of -the winds and waves. These fellows with their sea-wit are the least to -our taste of any part of the play: but they are as like drunken sailors -as they can be, and are an indirect foil to Caliban, whose figure -acquires a classical dignity in the comparison. - -The character of Caliban is generally thought (and justly so) to be one -of the author’s master-pieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see this -character on the stage any more than it is to see the god Pan personated -there. But in itself it is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all -Shakespear’s characters, whose deformity whether of body or mind is -redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination displayed in it. It -is the essence of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity in -it. Shakespear has described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with -the pure and original forms of nature; the character grows out of the -soil where it is rooted, uncontrouled, uncouth and wild, uncramped by -any of the meannesses of custom. It is ‘of the earth, earthy.’ It seems -almost to have been dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively -superadded to it answering to its wants and origin. Vulgarity is not -natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learnt from others, -contrary to, or without an entire conformity of natural power and -disposition; as fashion is the common-place affectation of what is -elegant and refined without any feeling of the essence of it. Schlegel, -the admirable German critic on Shakespear, observes that Caliban is a -poetical character, and ‘always speaks in blank verse.’ He first comes -in thus: - - ‘_Caliban._ As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d - With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen, - Drop on you both: a south-west blow on ye, - And blister you all o’er! - - _Prospero._ For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, - Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins - Shall for that vast of night that they may work, - All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinched - As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging - Than bees that made them. - - _Caliban._ I must eat my dinner. - This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother, - Which thou tak’st from me. When thou camest first, - Thou stroak’dst me, and mad’st much of me; would’st give me - Water with berries in ‘t; and teach me how - To name the bigger light and how the less - That burn by day and night; and then I lov’d thee, - And shew’d thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle, - The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: - Curs’d be I that I did so! All the charms - Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! - For I am all the subjects that you have, - Who first was mine own king; and here you sty me - In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me - The rest o’ th’ island.’ - -And again, he promises Trinculo his services thus, if he will free him -from his drudgery. - - ‘I’ll shew thee the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries, - I’ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. - I pr’ythee let me bring thee where crabs grow, - And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts: - Shew thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how - To snare the nimble marmozet: I’ll bring thee - To clust’ring filberds; and sometimes I’ll get thee - Young scamels from the rock.’ - -In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero’s cell, Caliban shews -the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and greater -folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, -Caliban to encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent poetry of the -senses. - - —‘Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, - Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. - Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments - Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, - That if I then had waked after long sleep, - Would make me sleep again; and then in dreaming, - The clouds methought would open, and shew riches - Ready to drop upon me; when I wak’d, - I cried to dream again.’ - -This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shews us the -savage with the simplicity of a child, and makes the strange monster -amiable. Shakespear had to paint the human animal rude and without -choice in its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some -germ of the affections. Master Barnardine in _Measure for Measure_, the -savage of civilized life, is an admirable philosophical counterpart to -Caliban. - -Shakespear has, as it were by design, drawn off from Caliban the -elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to compound them in the -unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing was ever more finely conceived than -this contrast between the material and the spiritual, the gross and -delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought -personified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he says, ‘I drink -the air before me.’ This is something like Puck’s boast on a similar -occasion, ‘I’ll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.’ -But Ariel differs from Puck in having a fellow feeling in the interests -of those he is employed about. How exquisite is the following dialogue -between him and Prospero! - - ‘_Ariel._ Your charm so strongly works ‘em, - That if you now beheld them, your affections - Would become tender. - - _Prospero._ Dost thou think so, spirit? - - _Ariel._ Mine would, sir, were I human. - - _Prospero._ And mine shall. - Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling - Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, - One of their kind, that relish all as sharply, - Passion’d as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?’ - -It has been observed that there is a peculiar charm in the songs -introduced in Shakespear, which, without conveying any distinct images, -seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like snatches of -half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and at intervals. There is this -effect produced by Ariel’s songs, which (as we are told) seem to sound -in the air, and as if the person playing them were invisible. We shall -give one instance out of many of this general power. - - ‘_Enter_ FERDINAND; _and_ ARIEL _invisible, playing and singing_. - - ARIEL’S SONG. - - Come unto these yellow sands, - And then take hands; - Curt’sied when you have, and kiss’d, - (The wild waves whist;) - Foot it featly here and there; - And sweet sprites the burden bear. - [_Burden dispersedly._ - Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh: the watch-dogs bark, - Bowgh-wowgh. - - _Ariel._ Hark, hark! I hear - The strain of strutting chanticleer - Cry cock-a-doodle-doo. - - _Ferdinand._ Where should this music be? i’ the air or the earth? - It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon - Some god o’ th’ island. Sitting on a bank - Weeping against the king my father’s wreck, - This music crept by me upon the waters, - Allaying both their fury and my passion - With its sweet air; thence I have follow’d it, - Or it hath drawn me rather:—but ’tis gone.— - No, it begins again. - - ARIEL’S SONG. - - Full fathom five thy father lies, - Of his bones are coral made: - Those are pearls that were his eyes, - Nothing of him that doth fade, - But doth suffer a sea change, - Into something rich and strange. - Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell— - Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong bell. - [_Burden ding-dong._ - - _Ferdinand._ The ditty does remember my drown’d father. - This is no mortal business, nor no sound - That the earth owes: I hear it now above me.’— - -The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief beauties -of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended interference -of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in character with the -magician, whose sense of preternatural power makes him arbitrary, -tetchy, and impatient of opposition. - -The TEMPEST is a finer play than the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, which -has sometimes been compared with it; but it is not so fine a poem. There -are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the -most striking in the TEMPEST are spoken by Prospero. The one is that -admirable one when the vision which he has conjured up disappears, -beginning ‘The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,’ etc., which -has been so often quoted, that every school-boy knows it by heart; the -other is that which Prospero makes in abjuring his art. - - ‘Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, - And ye that on the sands with printless foot - Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him - When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that - By moon-shine do the green sour ringlets make, - Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime - Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice - To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid - (Weak masters tho’ ye be) I have be-dimm’d - The noon-tide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, - And ‘twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault - Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder - Have I giv’n fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak - With his own bolt; the strong-bas’d promontory - Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’d up - The pine and cedar: graves at my command - Have wak’d their sleepers; oped, and let ‘em forth - By my so potent art. But this rough magic - I here abjure; and when I have requir’d - Some heavenly music, which even now I do, - (To work mine end upon their senses that - This airy charm is for) I’ll break my staff, - Bury it certain fadoms in the earth, - And deeper than did ever plummet sound, - I’ll drown my book.’— - -We must not forget to mention among other things in this play, that -Shakespear has anticipated nearly all the arguments on the Utopian -schemes of modern philosophy. - - ‘_Gonzalo._ Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord— - - _Antonio._ He’d sow it with nettle-seed. - - _Sebastian._ Or docks or mallows. - - _Gonzalo._ And were the king on’t, what would I do? - - _Sebastian._ ‘Scape being drunk, for want of wine. - - _Gonzalo._ I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries - Execute all things: for no kind of traffic - Would I admit; no name of magistrate; - Letters should not be known; wealth, poverty, - And use of service, none; contract, succession, - Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; - No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; - No occupation, all men idle, all, - And women too; but innocent and pure: - No sovereignty. - - _Sebastian._ And yet he would be king on ‘t. - - _Antonio._ The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the - beginning. - - _Gonzalo._ All things in common nature should produce - Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony, - Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine - Would I not have; but nature should bring forth, - Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance - To feed my innocent people! - - _Sebastian._ No marrying ‘mong his subjects? - - _Antonio._ None, man; all idle; whores and knaves. - - _Gonzalo._ I would with such perfection govern, sir, - To excel the golden age. - - _Sebastian._ Save his majesty!’ - - - THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM - -Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He -is the most romantic of mechanics. And what a list of companions he -has—Quince the Carpenter, Snug the Joiner, Flute the Bellows-mender, -Snout the Tinker, Starveling the Tailor; and then again, what a group of -fairy attendants, Puck, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed! It -has been observed that Shakespear’s characters are constructed upon deep -physiological principles; and there is something in this play which -looks very like it. Bottom the Weaver, who takes the lead of - - ‘This crew of patches, rude mechanicals, - That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,’ - -follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as -conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake any thing -and every thing, as if it was as much a matter of course as the motion -of his loom and shuttle. He is for playing the tyrant, the lover, the -lady, the lion. ‘He will roar that it shall do any man’s heart good to -hear him’; and this being objected to as improper, he still has a -resource in his good opinion of himself, and ‘will roar you an ‘twere -any nightingale.’ Snug the Joiner is the moral man of the piece, who -proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him with -his rule and compasses in his hand. ‘Have you the lion’s part written? -Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.’ ‘You may do it -extempore,’ says Quince, ‘for it is nothing but roaring.’ Starveling the -Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the lion and the drawn sword. ‘I -believe we must leave the killing out when all’s done.’ Starveling, -however, does not start the objections himself, but seconds them when -made by others, as if he had not spirit to express his fears without -encouragement. It is too much to suppose all this intentional: but it -very luckily falls out so. Nature includes all that is implied in the -most subtle analytical distinctions; and the same distinctions will be -found in Shakespear. Bottom, who is not only chief actor, but -stage-manager for the occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of -frightening the ladies: ‘Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem -to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not -killed indeed; and for better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am -not Pyramus, but Bottom the Weaver: this will put them out of fear.’ -Bottom seems to have understood the subject of dramatic illusion at -least as well as any modern essayist. If our holiday mechanic rules the -roast among his fellows, he is no less at home in his new character of -an ass, ‘with amiable cheeks, and fair large ears.’ He instinctively -acquires a most learned taste, and grows fastidious in the choice of -dried peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his new -attendants, and assigns them their parts with all due gravity. ‘Monsieur -Cobweb, good Monsieur, get your weapon in your hand, and kill me a -red-hipt humble bee on the top of a thistle, and, good Monsieur, bring -me the honey-bag.’ What an exact knowledge is here shewn of natural -history! - -Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the -Ariel of the MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM; and yet as unlike as can be to the -Ariel in _The Tempest_. No other poet could have made two such different -characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a -minister of retribution, who is touched with the sense of pity at the -woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and -mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—‘Lord, what fools these -mortals be!’ Ariel cleaves the air, and executes his mission with the -zeal of a winged messenger; Puck is borne along on his fairy errand like -the light and glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is, indeed, a -most Epicurean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices, and faring -in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are a set of -moralists: but with Oberon and his fairies we are launched at once into -the empire of the butterflies. How beautifully is this race of beings -contrasted with the men and women actors in the scene, by a single -epithet which Titania gives to the latter, ‘the human mortals!’ It is -astonishing that Shakespear should be considered, not only by -foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and heavy -writer, who painted nothing but ‘gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire.’ -His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a -celebrated person of the present day said that he regarded him rather as -a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety are -infinite. In the MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM alone, we should imagine, there -is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of -French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce -out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten -passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying -equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to -Hermia, or Titania’s description of her fairy train, or her disputes -with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck’s account of himself and his -employments, or the Fairy Queen’s exhortation to the elves to pay due -attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita’s description of a -chace, or Theseus’s answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as -the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is -like wandering in a grove by moonlight: the descriptions breathe a -sweetness like odours thrown from beds of flowers. - -Titania’s exhortation to the fairies to wait upon Bottom, which is -remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the repetition of the -rhymes, is as follows:— - - ‘Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. - Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes, - Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, - With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries; - The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, - And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, - And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, - To have my love to bed, and to arise: - And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, - To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes; - Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.’ - -The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the -poetry of the foregoing passage, and of the conversation between Theseus -and Hippolita. - - ‘_Theseus._ Go, one of you, find out the forester, - For now our observation is perform’d; - And since we have the vaward of the day, - My love shall hear the music of my hounds. - Uncouple in the western valley, go, - Dispatch, I say, and find the forester. - We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain’s top, - And mark the musical confusion - Of hounds and echo in conjunction. - - _Hippolita._ I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, - When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear - With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear - Such gallant chiding. For besides the groves, - The skies, the fountains, every region near - Seem’d all one mutual cry. I never heard - So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. - - _Theseus._ My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, - So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hung - With ears that sweep away the morning dew; - Crook-knee’d and dew-lap’d, like Thessalian bulls. - Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, - Each under each. A cry more tuneable - Was never halloo’d to, nor cheer’d with horn, - In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: - Judge when you hear.’— - -Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a _gusto_ so fresh and lusty, -and so near the first ages of the world as this.— - -It had been suggested to us, that the MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM would do -admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter -proposed that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his -great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to play the -lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant -like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like ‘the most -fearful wild-fowl living.’ The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner, it was -thought, would hit the galleries. The young ladies in love would -interest the side-boxes; and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite -a lively fellow-feeling in the children from school. There would be two -courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and -Queen, with their attendants, and with all their finery. What an -opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets and glittering of -spears! What a fluttering of urchins’ painted wings; what a delightful -profusion of gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on them! - -Alas the experiment has been tried, and has failed; not through the -fault of Mr. Kean, who did not play the part of Bottom, nor of Mr. -Liston, who did, and who played it well, but from the nature of things. -The MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, when acted, is converted from a delightful -fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in -the representation. The spectacle was grand: but the spirit was -evaporated, the genius was fled.—Poetry and the stage do not agree well -together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only -of effect, but of decorum. The _ideal_ can have no place upon the stage, -which is a picture without perspective; everything there is in the -foreground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing -thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left -to the imagination (as is the case in reading) every circumstance, near -or remote, has an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells -according to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested. But -the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of -the senses. Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by -explanation. Thus Bottom’s head in the play is a fantastic illusion, -produced by magic spells: on the stage it is an ass’s head, and nothing -more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. -Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it -is as idle to attempt it as to personate _Wall_ or _Moonshine_. Fairies -are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not -shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at -mid-day, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the MIDSUMMER -NIGHT’S DREAM be represented without injury at Covent Garden or at Drury -Lane. The boards of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same -thing. - - - ROMEO AND JULIET - -ROMEO AND JULIET is the only tragedy which Shakespear has written -entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, -and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit -of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in -the bitterness of despair. It has been said of ROMEO AND JULIET by a -great critic, that ‘whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a -southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or -voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this -poem.’ The description is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea -of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its -freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingale’s song, it has -also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, -it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and -sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not -love-sick. Every thing speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and -healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates and -mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of -sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays,—made up -of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of ‘fancies wan that hang the -pensive head,’ of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of -delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce -supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial -dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It is the reverse of all -this. It is Shakespear all over, and Shakespear when he was young. - -We have heard it objected to ROMEO AND JULIET, that it is founded on an -idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely seen and can -have but little sympathy or rational esteem for one another, who have -had no experience of the good or ills of life, and whose raptures or -despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantastical. Whoever -objects to the youth of the parties in this play as ‘too unripe and -crude’ to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first-love -carried on into a good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, -when their force is spent, may find all this done in the _Stranger_ and -in other German plays, where they do things by contraries, and transpose -nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. Shakespear proceeded -in a more strait-forward, and, we think, effectual way. He did not -endeavour to extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion -from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not ‘gather grapes -of thorns nor figs of thistles.’ It was not his way. But he has given a -picture of human life, such as it is in the order of nature. He has -founded the passion of the two lovers not on the pleasures they had -experienced, but on all the pleasures they had _not_ experienced. All -that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried source of promised -happiness they slaked their thirst, and the first eager draught made -them drunk with love and joy. They were in full possession of their -senses and their affections. Their hopes were of air, their desires of -fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then first -melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture, -for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes. Desire has no limit -but itself. Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, -extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and kill it. -Juliet exclaims on her first interview with Romeo— - - ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, - My love as deep.’ - -And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of -pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without -stint or measure, but experience which she was yet without? What was to -abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her -heart and her senses had just tasted, but indifference which she was yet -a stranger to? What was there to check the ardour of hope, of faith, of -constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment which she had -not yet felt! As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such -is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such -is the transition in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest -despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that -even in apprehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest -possible felicity; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather -part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made life -dear to them. In all this, Shakespear has but followed nature, which -existed in his time, as well as now. The modern philosophy, which -reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves -the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the account, had -not then been discovered; or if it had, would have been little -calculated for the uses of poetry. - -It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account -for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. -Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism in his Ode on -the Progress of Life. He has very admirably described the vividness of -our impressions in youth and childhood, and how ‘they fade by degrees -into the light of common day,’ and he ascribes the change to the -supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were -nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our -past being. This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past that -the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendour, but -from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with the -warmth of our desires, with our gayest hopes, and brightest fancies. It -is the obscurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life with -hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is no -occasion to resort to any mystical union and transmission of feeling -through different states of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm -of youth; nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it -from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its head above -the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The -heaven ‘that lies about us in our infancy’ is only a new world, of which -we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. -In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and -of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. -What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That -makes the daisy look so bright? That perfumes the hyacinth? That embalms -the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no -end to the pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us. The -heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain -the weight of hope and love that presses upon it.—The effects of the -passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. Wordsworth’s theory, if -he means any thing more by it than an ingenious and poetical allegory. -_That_ at least is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds; -‘the purple light of love’ is not a dim reflection of the smiles of -celestial bliss. It does not appear till the middle of life, and then -seems like ‘another morn risen on mid-day.’ In this respect the soul -comes into the world ‘in utter nakedness.’ Love waits for the ripening -of the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the love of -pleasure, but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as it is felt, come -thronging infinite desires and hopes of pleasure, and love is mature as -soon as born. It withers and it dies almost as soon! - -This play presents a beautiful _coup-d’œil_ of the progress of human -life. In thought it occupies years, and embraces the circle of the -affections from childhood to old age. Juliet has become a great girl, a -young woman since we first remember her a little thing in the idle -prattle of the nurse. Lady Capulet was about her age when she became a -mother, and old Capulet somewhat impatiently tells his younger visitors, - - ——‘I’ve seen the day, - That I have worn a visor, and could tell - A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, - Such as would please: ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone.’ - -Thus one period of life makes way for the following, and one generation -pushes another off the stage. One of the most striking passages to show -the intense feeling of youth in this play is Capulet’s invitation to -Paris to visit his entertainment. - - ‘At my poor house, look to behold this night - Earth-treading stars that make dark heav’n light; - Such comfort as do lusty young men feel - When well-apparel’d April on the heel - Of limping winter treads, even such delight - Among fresh female-buds shall you this night - Inherit at my house.’ - -The feelings of youth and of the spring are here blended together like -the breath of opening flowers. Images of vernal beauty appear to have -floated before the author’s mind, in writing this poem, in profusion. -Here is another of exquisite beauty, brought in more by accident than by -necessity. Montague declares of his son smit with a hopeless passion, -which he will not reveal— - - ‘But he, his own affection’s counsellor, - Is to himself so secret and so close, - So far from sounding and discovery, - As is the bud bit with an envious worm, - Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, - Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.’ - -This casual description is as full of passionate beauty as when Romeo -dwells in frantic fondness on ‘the white wonder of his Juliet’s hand.’ -The reader may, if he pleases, contrast the exquisite pastoral -simplicity of the above lines with the gorgeous description of Juliet -when Romeo first sees her at her father’s house, surrounded by company -and artificial splendour. - - ‘What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand - Of yonder knight? - O she doth teach the torches to burn bright; - Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, - Like a rich jewel in an Æthiop’s ear.’ - -It would be hard to say which of the two garden scenes is the finest, -that where he first converses with his love, or takes leave of her the -morning after their marriage. Both are like a heaven upon earth; the -blissful bowers of Paradise let down upon this lower world. We will give -only one passage of these well known scenes to shew the perfect -refinement and delicacy of Shakespear’s conception of the female -character. It is wonderful how Collins, who was a critic and a poet of -great sensibility, should have encouraged the common error on this -subject by saying—‘But stronger Shakespear felt for man alone.’ - -The passage we mean is Juliet’s apology for her maiden boldness. - - ‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face; - Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek - For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night. - Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny - What I have spoke—but farewel compliment: - Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say, ay, - And I will take thee at thy word—Yet if thou swear’st, - Thou may’st prove false; at lovers’ perjuries - They say Jove laughs. Oh gentle Romeo, - If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully; - Or if thou think I am too quickly won, - I’ll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, - So thou wilt woo: but else not for the world. - In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond; - And therefore thou may’st think my ‘haviour light; - But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true - Than those that have more cunning to be strange. - I should have been more strange, I must confess - But that thou over-heard’st, ere I was ware, - My true love’s passion; therefore pardon me, - And not impute this yielding to light love, - Which the dark night hath so discovered.’ - -In this and all the rest, her heart, fluttering between pleasure, hope, -and fear, seems to have dictated to her tongue, and ‘calls true love -spoken simple modesty.’ Of the same sort, but bolder in virgin -innocence, is her soliloquy after her marriage with Romeo. - - ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, - Towards Phœbus’ mansion; such a waggoner - As Phaëton would whip you to the west, - And bring in cloudy night immediately. - Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night; - That run-aways’ eyes may wink; and Romeo - Leap to these arms, untalked of, and unseen!—— - Lovers can see to do their amorous rites - By their own beauties: or if love be blind, - It best agrees with night.—Come, civil night, - Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, - And learn me how to lose a winning match, - Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: - Hold my unmann’d blood bating in my cheeks, - With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, - Thinks true love acted, simple modesty. - Come night!—Come, Romeo! come, thou day in night; - For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night - Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.—— - Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow’d night, - Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die, - Take him and cut him out in little stars, - And he will make the face of heaven so fine, - That all the world shall be in love with night, - And pay no worship to the garish sun.—— - O, I have bought the mansion of a love, - But not possess’d it; and though I am sold, - Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day, - As is the night before some festival - To an impatient child, that hath new robes, - And may not wear them.’ - -We the rather insert this passage here, inasmuch as we have no doubt it -has been expunged from the Family Shakespear. Such critics do not -perceive that the feelings of the heart sanctify, without disguising, -the impulses of nature. Without refinement themselves, they confound -modesty with hypocrisy. Not so the German critic, Schlegel. Speaking of -ROMEO AND JULIET, he says, ‘It was reserved for Shakespear to unite -purity of heart and the glow of imagination, sweetness and dignity of -manners and passionate violence, in one ideal picture.’ The character is -indeed one of perfect truth and sweetness. It has nothing forward, -nothing coy, nothing affected or coquettish about it;—it is a pure -effusion of nature. It is as frank as it is modest, for it has no -thought that it wishes to conceal. It reposes in conscious innocence on -the strength of its affections. Its delicacy does not consist in -coldness and reserve, but in combining warmth of imagination and -tenderness of heart with the most voluptuous sensibility. Love is a -gentle flame that rarifies and expands her whole being. What an idea of -trembling haste and airy grace, borne upon the thoughts of love, does -the Friar’s exclamation give of her, as she approaches his cell to be -married— - - ‘Here comes the lady. Oh, so light of foot - Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint: - A lover may bestride the gossamer, - That idles in the wanton summer air, - And yet not fall, so light is vanity.’ - -The tragic part of this character is of a piece with the rest. It is the -heroic founded on tenderness and delicacy. Of this kind are her -resolution to follow the Friar’s advice, and the conflict in her bosom -between apprehension and love when she comes to take the sleeping -poison. Shakespear is blamed for the mixture of low characters. If this -is a deformity, it is the source of a thousand beauties. One instance is -the contrast between the guileless simplicity of Juliet’s attachment to -her first love, and the convenient policy of the nurse in advising her -to marry Paris, which excites such indignation in her mistress. ‘Ancient -damnation! oh most wicked fiend,’ etc. - -Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same rich exuberance of passion -and sentiment in the one, that there is of thought and sentiment in the -other. Both are absent and self-involved, both live out of themselves in -a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from every thing; Romeo is -abstracted from every thing but his love, and lost in it. His ‘frail -thoughts dally with faint surmise,’ and are fashioned out of the -suggestions of hope, ‘the flatteries of sleep.’ He is himself only in -his Juliet; she is his only reality, his heart’s true home and idol. The -rest of the world is to him a passing dream. How finely is this -character pourtrayed where he recollects himself on seeing Paris slain -at the tomb of Juliet!— - - ‘What said my man, when my betossed soul - Did not attend him as we rode? I think - He told me Paris should have married Juliet.’ - -And again, just before he hears the sudden tidings of her death— - - ‘If I may trust the flattery of sleep, - My dreams presage some joyful news at hand; - My bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne, - And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit - Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. - I dreamt my lady came and found me dead, - (Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think) - And breath’d such life with kisses on my lips, - That I reviv’d and was an emperour. - Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess’d, - When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy!’ - -Romeo’s passion for Juliet is not a first love: it succeeds and drives -out his passion for another mistress, Rosaline, as the sun hides the -stars. This is perhaps an artifice (not absolutely necessary) to give us -a higher opinion of the lady, while the first absolute surrender of her -heart to him enhances the richness of the prize. The commencement, -progress, and ending of his second passion are however complete in -themselves, not injured if they are not bettered by the first. The -outline of the play is taken from an Italian novel; but the dramatic -arrangement of the different scenes between the lovers, the more than -dramatic interest in the progress of the story, the developement of the -characters with time and circumstances, just according to the degree and -kind of interest excited, are not inferior to the expression of passion -and nature. It has been ingeniously remarked among other proofs of skill -in the contrivance of the fable, that the improbability of the main -incident in the piece, the administering of the sleeping-potion, is -softened and obviated from the beginning by the introduction of the -Friar on his first appearance culling simples and descanting on their -virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the -Friar and Romeo when he is told of his sentence of banishment, that -between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of it, and of the death of -her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion in her mind, when passion -after the first shock of surprise throws its weight into the scale of -her affections) and the last scene at the tomb, are among the most -natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not merely the force of -any one passion that is given, but the slightest and most unlooked-for -transitions from one to another, the mingling currents of every -different feeling rising up and prevailing in turn, swayed by the -master-mind of the poet, as the waves undulate beneath the gliding -storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encouraged the Nurse to -say, ‘Shame come to Romeo,’ she instantly repels the wish, which she had -herself occasioned, by answering— - - ‘Blister’d be thy tongue - For such a wish! He was not born to shame. - Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit, - For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d - Sole monarch of the universal earth! - O, what a beast was I to chide him so? - - _Nurse._ Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin? - - _Juliet._ Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? - Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, - When I, thy three-hours’ wife, have mangled it?’ - -And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that -wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the -strength of her devotion to her lord, that ‘father, mother, nay, or both -were dead,’ rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other -excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and -disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.—Perhaps one -of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is -Mr. Kean’s manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word, -_Banished_. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author. - -A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespear -(actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal -truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of -Juliet, before he drinks the poison. - - ——‘Let me peruse this face— - Mercutio’s kinsman! noble county Paris! - What said my man, when my betossed soul - Did not attend him as we rode? I think, - He told me Paris should have married Juliet: - Said he not so? or did I dream it so? - Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, - To think it was so?——O, give me thy hand, - One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book! - I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave—— - For here lies Juliet. - - . . . . . - - ——O, my love! my wife! - Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, - Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: - Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet - Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, - And Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.—— - Tybalt, ly’st thou there in thy bloody sheet? - O, what more favour can I do to thee, - Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain, - To sunder his that was thine enemy? - Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, - Why art thou yet so fair! Shall I believe - That unsubstantial death is amorous; - And that the lean abhorred monster keeps - Thee here in dark to be his paramour! - For fear of that, I will stay still with thee; - And never from this palace of dim night - Depart again: here, here will I remain - With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here - Will I set up my everlasting rest; - And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars - From this world-wearied flesh.—Eyes, look your last! - Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you, - The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss - A dateless bargain to engrossing death!— - Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide! - Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on - The dashing rocks my sea-sick weary bark! - Here’s to my love!—[_Drinks._] O, true apothecary! - Thy drugs are quick.—Thus with a kiss I die.’ - -The lines in this speech, describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is -supposed to be dead, have been compared to those in which it is said of -Cleopatra after her death, that she looked ‘as she would take another -Antony in her strong toil of grace’; and a question has been started -which is the finest, that we do not pretend to decide. We can more -easily decide between Shakespear and any other author, than between him -and himself.—Shall we quote any more passages to shew his genius or the -beauty of ROMEO AND JULIET? At that rate, we might quote the whole. The -late Mr. Sheridan, on being shewn a volume of the Beauties of -Shakespear, very properly asked—‘But where are the other eleven?’ The -character of Mercutio in this play is one of the most mercurial and -spirited of the productions of Shakespear’s comic muse. - - - LEAR - -We wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about it. All -that we can say must fall far short of the subject; or even of what we -ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a description of the play -itself or of its effect upon the mind, is mere impertinence; yet we must -say something.—It is then the best of all Shakespear’s plays, for it is -the one in which he was the most in earnest. He was here fairly caught -in the web of his own imagination. The passion which he has taken as his -subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart; of -which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the cancelling and -tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. -This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the -elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy -anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing -it, the contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of natural -affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly -wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, -this is what Shakespear has given, and what nobody else but he could -give. So we believe.—The mind of Lear, staggering between the weight of -attachment and the hurried movements of passion, is like a tall ship -driven about by the winds, buffetted by the furious waves, but that -still rides above the storm, having its anchor fixed in the bottom of -the sea; or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool -that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed -from its basis by the force of an earthquake. - -The character of Lear itself is very finely conceived for the purpose. -It is the only ground on which such a story could be built with the -greatest truth and effect. It is his rash haste, his violent -impetuosity, his blindness to every thing but the dictates of his -passions or affections, that produces all his misfortunes, that -aggravates his impatience of them, that enforces our pity for him. The -part which Cordelia bears in the scene is extremely beautiful: the story -is almost told in the first words she utters. We see at once the -precipice on which the poor old king stands from his own extravagant and -credulous importunity, the indiscreet simplicity of her love (which, to -be sure, has a little of her father’s obstinacy in it) and the -hollowness of her sisters’ pretensions. Almost the first burst of that -noble tide of passion, which runs through the play, is in the -remonstrance of Kent to his royal master on the injustice of his -sentence against his youngest daughter—‘Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is -mad!’ This manly plainness, which draws down on him the displeasure of -the unadvised king, is worthy of the fidelity with which he adheres to -his fallen fortunes. The true character of the two eldest daughters, -Regan and Gonerill (they are so thoroughly hateful that we do not even -like to repeat their names) breaks out in their answer to Cordelia who -desires them to treat their father well—‘Prescribe not us our -duties’—their hatred of advice being in proportion to their -determination to do wrong, and to their hypocritical pretensions to do -right. Their deliberate hypocrisy adds the last finishing to the -odiousness of their characters. It is the absence of this detestable -quality that is the only relief in the character of Edmund the Bastard, -and that at times reconciles us to him. We are not tempted to exaggerate -the guilt of his conduct, when he himself gives it up as a bad business, -and writes himself down ‘plain villain.’ Nothing more can be said about -it. His religious honesty in this respect is admirable. One speech of -his is worth a million. His father, Gloster, whom he has just deluded -with a forged story of his brother Edgar’s designs against his life, -accounts for his unnatural behaviour and the strange depravity of the -times from the late eclipses in the sun and moon. Edmund, who is in the -secret, says when he is gone—‘This is the excellent foppery of the -world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own -behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars: -as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; -knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, -liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; -and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable -evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition on the -charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s -tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major: so that it follows, I am -rough and lecherous. Tut! I should have been what I am, had the -maidenliness star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising.’—The -whole character, its careless, light-hearted villainy, contrasted with -the sullen, rancorous malignity of Regan and Gonerill, its connection -with the conduct of the under-plot, in which Gloster’s persecution of -one of his sons and the ingratitude of another, form a counterpart to -the mistakes and misfortunes of Lear,—his double amour with the two -sisters, and the share which he has in bringing about the fatal -catastrophe, are all managed with an uncommon degree of skill and power. - -It has been said, and we think justly, that the third act of _Othello_ -and the three first acts of LEAR, are Shakespear’s great master-pieces -in the logic of passion: that they contain the highest examples not only -of the force of individual passion, but of its dramatic vicissitudes and -striking effects arising from the different circumstances and characters -of the persons speaking. We see the ebb and flow of the feeling, its -pauses and feverish starts, its impatience of opposition, its -accumulating force when it has time to recollect itself, the manner in -which it avails itself of every passing word or gesture, its haste to -repel insinuation, the alternate contraction and dilatation of the soul, -and all ‘the dazzling fence of controversy’ in this mortal combat with -poisoned weapons, aimed at the heart, where each wound is fatal. We have -seen in _Othello_, how the unsuspecting frankness and impetuous passions -of the Moor are played upon and exasperated by the artful dexterity of -Iago. In the present play, that which aggravates the sense of sympathy -in the reader, and of uncontroulable anguish in the swoln heart of Lear, -is the petrifying indifference, the cold, calculating, obdurate -selfishness of his daughters. His keen passions seem whetted on their -stony hearts. The contrast would be too painful, the shock too great, -but for the intervention of the Fool, whose well-timed levity comes in -to break the continuity of feeling when it can no longer be borne, and -to bring into play again the fibres of the heart just as they are -growing rigid from overstrained excitement. The imagination is glad to -take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of the Fool, just -as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical operation vents -itself in sallies of wit. The character was also a grotesque ornament of -the barbarous times, in which alone the tragic ground-work of the story -could be laid. In another point of view it is indispensable, inasmuch as -while it is a diversion to the too great intensity of our disgust, it -carries the pathos to the highest pitch of which it is capable, by -shewing the pitiable weakness of the old king’s conduct and its -irretrievable consequences in the most familiar point of view. Lear may -well ‘beat at the gate which let his folly in,’ after, as the Fool says, -‘he has made his daughters his mothers.’ The character is dropped in the -third act to make room for the entrance of Edgar as Mad Tom, which well -accords with the increasing bustle and wildness of the incidents; and -nothing can be more complete than the distinction between Lear’s real -and Edgar’s assumed madness, while the resemblance in the cause of their -distresses, from the severing of the nearest ties of natural affection, -keeps up a unity of interest. Shakespear’s mastery over his subject, if -it was not art, was owing to a knowledge of the connecting links of the -passions, and their effect upon the mind, still more wonderful than any -systematic adherence to rules, and that anticipated and outdid all the -efforts of the most refined art, not inspired and rendered instinctive -by genius. - -One of the most perfect displays of dramatic power is the first -interview between Lear and his daughter, after the designed affronts -upon him, which till one of his knights reminds him of them, his -sanguine temperament had led him to overlook. He returns with his train -from hunting, and his usual impatience breaks out in his first words, -‘Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go, get it ready.’ He then encounters -the faithful Kent in disguise, and retains him in his service; and the -first trial of his honest duty is to trip up the heels of the officious -Steward who makes so prominent and despicable a figure through the -piece. On the entrance of Gonerill the following dialogue takes place:— - - ‘_Lear._ How now, daughter? what makes that frontlet on? - Methinks, you are too much of late i’ the frown. - - _Fool._ Thou wast a pretty fellow, when thou had’st no need to care - for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure: I am better - than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing.——Yes, forsooth, I - will hold my tongue; [_To Gonerill_], so your face bids me, though - you say nothing. Mum, mum. - - He that keeps nor crust nor crum, - Weary of all, shall want some.—— - - That’s a sheal’d peascod! [_Pointing to Lear._ - - _Gonerill._ Not only, sir, this your all-licens’d fool, - But other of your insolent retinue - Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth - In rank and not-to-be-endured riots. - I had thought, by making this well known unto you, - To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful, - By what yourself too late have spoke and done, - That you protect this course, and put it on - By your allowance; which if you should, the fault - Would not ‘scape censure, nor the redresses sleep, - Which in the tender of a wholesome weal, - Might in their working do you that offence, - (Which else were shame) that then necessity - Would call discreet proceeding. - - _Fool._ For you trow, nuncle, - - The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, - That it had its head bit off by its young. - - So out went the candle, and we were left darkling. - - _Lear._ Are you our daughter? - - _Gonerill._ Come, sir, - I would, you would make use of that good wisdom - Whereof I know you are fraught; and put away - These dispositions, which of late transform you - From what you rightly are. - - _Fool._ May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? - ——Whoop, Jug, I love thee. - - _Lear._ Does any here know me?—Why, this is not Lear: - Does Lear walk thus? speak thus?—Where are his eyes? - Either his notion weakens, or his discernings - Are lethargy’d——Ha! waking?—’Tis not so.—— - Who is it that can tell me who I am?—Lear’s shadow? - I would learn that: for by the marks - Of sov’reignty, of knowledge, and of reason, - I should be false persuaded I had daughters.—— - Your name, fair gentlewoman? - - _Gonerill._ Come, sir: - This admiration is much o’ the favour - Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you - To understand my purposes aright: - As you are old and reverend, you should be wise: - Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires; - Men so disorder’d, so debauch’d, and bold, - That this our court, infected with their manners, - Shews like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust - Make it more like a tavern, or a brothel, - Than a grac’d palace. The shame itself doth speak - For instant remedy: be then desir’d - By her, that else will take the thing she begs, - A little to disquantity your train; - And the remainder, that shall still depend, - To be such men as may besort your age, - And know themselves and you. - - _Lear._ Darkness and devils!—— - Saddle my horses; call my train together.—— - Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee; - Yet have I left a daughter. - - _Gonerill._ You strike my people; and your disorder’d rabble - Make servants of their betters. - - _Enter_ ALBANY. - - _Lear._ Woe, that too late repents—O, sir, are you come? - Is it your will? speak, sir.—Prepare my horses.—— [_To Albany._ - Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, - More hideous, when thou shew’st thee in a child, - Than the sea-monster! - - _Albany._ Pray, sir, be patient. - - _Lear._ Detested kite! thou liest. [_To Gonerill._ - My train are men of choice and rarest parts, - That all particulars of duty know; - And in the most exact regard support - The worships of their name.——O most small fault, - How ugly didst thou in Cordelia shew! - Which, like an engine, wrench’d my frame of nature - From the fixt place; drew from my heart all love, - And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear! - Beat at the gate, that let thy folly in, [_Striking his head._ - And thy dear judgment out!——Go, go, my people! - - _Albany._ My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant - Of what hath mov’d you. - - _Lear._ It may be so, my lord—— - Hear, nature, hear! dear goddess, hear! - Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend - To make this creature fruitful! - Into her womb convey sterility; - Dry up in her the organs of increase; - And from her derogate body never spring - A babe to honour her! If she must teem, - Create her child of spleen: that it may live, - To be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her! - Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; - With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; - Turn all her mother’s pains, and benefits, - To laughter and contempt; that she may feel - How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is - To have a thankless child!——Away, away! [_Exit._ - - _Albany._ Now, gods, that we adore, whereof comes this? - - _Gonerill._ Never afflict yourself to know the cause; - But let his disposition have that scope - That dotage gives it. - - _Re-enter_ LEAR. - - _Lear._ What, fifty of my followers at a clap! - Within a fortnight! - - _Albany._ What’s the matter, sir? - - _Lear._ I’ll tell thee; life and death! I am asham’d - That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus: [_To Gonerill._ - That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, - Should make thee worth them.——Blasts and fogs upon thee! - The untented woundings of a father’s curse - Pierce every sense about thee!——Old fond eyes - Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck you out; - And cast you, with the waters that you lose, - To temper clay.——Ha! is it come to this? - Let it be so:——Yet have I left a daughter, - Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable; - When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails - She’ll flea thy wolfish visage. Thou shalt find, - That I’ll resume the shape, which thou dost think - I have cast off for ever. [_Exeunt Lear, Kent, and Attendants._’ - -This is certainly fine: no wonder that Lear says after it, ‘O let me not -be mad, not mad, sweet heavens,’ feeling its effects by anticipation; -but fine as is this burst of rage and indignation at the first blow -aimed at his hopes and expectations, it is nothing near so fine as what -follows from his double disappointment, and his lingering efforts to see -which of them he shall lean upon for support and find comfort in, when -both his daughters turn against his age and weakness. It is with some -difficulty that Lear gets to speak with his daughter Regan, and her -husband, at Gloster’s castle. In concert with Gonerill they have left -their own home on purpose to avoid him. His apprehensions are first -alarmed by this circumstance, and when Gloster, whose guests they are, -urges the fiery temper of the Duke of Cornwall as an excuse for not -importuning him a second time, Lear breaks out— - - ‘Vengeance! Plague! Death! Confusion!—— - Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloster, Gloster, - I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall, and his wife.’ - -Afterwards, feeling perhaps not well himself, he is inclined to admit -their excuse from illness, but then recollecting that they have set his -messenger (Kent) in the stocks, all his suspicions are roused again, and -he insists on seeing them. - - ‘_Enter_ CORNWALL, REGAN, GLOSTER, _and Servants_. - - _Lear._ Good-morrow to you both. - - _Cornwall._ Hail to your grace! [_Kent is set at liberty._ - - _Regan._ I am glad to see your highness. - - _Lear._ Regan, I think you are; I know what reason - I have to think so: if thou should’st not be glad, - I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, - Sepulch’ring an adultress.——O, are you free? [_To Kent._ - Some other time for that.——Beloved Regan, - Thy sister’s naught: O Regan, she hath tied - Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here—— - [_Points to his heart._ - I can scarce speak to thee; thou’lt not believe, - Of how deprav’d a quality——O Regan! - - _Regan._ I pray you, sir, take patience; I have hope - You less know how to value her desert, - Than she to scant her duty. - - _Lear._ Say, how is that? - - _Regan._ I cannot think my sister in the least - Would fail her obligation; if, sir, perchance, - She have restrain’d the riots of your followers, - ’Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end, - As clears her from all blame. - - _Lear._ My curses on her! - - _Regan._ O, sir, you are old; - Nature in you stands on the very verge - Of her confine: you should be rul’d, and led - By some discretion, that discerns your state - Better than you yourself: therefore, I pray you, - That to our sister you do make return; - Say, you have wrong’d her, sir. - - _Lear._ Ask her forgiveness? - Do you but mark how this becomes the use? - _Dear daughter, I confess that I am old_; - _Age is unnecessary; on my knees I beg, - That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food._ - - _Regan._ Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks: - Return you to my sister. - - _Lear._ Never, Regan: - She hath abated me of half my train; - Look’d blank upon me; struck me with her tongue, - Most serpent-like, upon the very heart:—— - All the stor’d vengeances of heaven fall - On her ungrateful top! Strike her young bones, - You taking airs, with lameness! - - _Cornwall._ Fie, sir, fie! - - _Lear._ You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames - Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty, - You fen-suck’d fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, - To fall, and blast her pride! - - _Regan._ O the blest gods! - So will you wish on me, when the rash mood is on. - - _Lear._ No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse; - Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give - Thee o’er to harshness; her eyes are fierce, but thine - Do comfort, and not burn: ’Tis not in thee - To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train, - To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes, - And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt - Against my coming in: thou better know’st - The offices of nature, bond of childhood, - Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude; - Thy half o’ the kingdom thou hast not forgot, - Wherein I thee endow’d. - - _Regan._ Good sir, to the purpose. [_Trumpets within._ - - _Lear._ Who put my man i’ the stocks? - - _Cornwall._ What trumpet’s that? - - _Enter Steward._ - - _Regan._ I know’t, my sister’s: this approves her letter, - That she would soon be here.—Is your lady come? - - _Lear._ This is a slave, whose easy-borrow’d pride - Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows:—— - Out, Varlet, from my sight! - - _Cornwall._ What means your grace? - - _Lear._ Who stock’d my servant? Regan, I have good hope - Thou did’st not know on’t.——Who comes here? O heavens, - - _Enter_ GONERILL. - - If you do love old men, if your sweet sway - Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, - Make it your cause; send down, and take my part!— - Art not asham’d to look upon this beard?— [_To Gonerill._ - O, Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand? - - _Gonerill._ Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended? - All’s not offence, that indiscretion finds, - And dotage terms so. - - _Lear._ O, sides, you are too tough! - Will you yet hold?—How came my man i’ the stocks? - - _Cornwall._ I set him there, sir: but his own disorders - Deserv’d much less advancement. - - _Lear._ You! did you? - - _Regan._ I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. - If, till the expiration of your month, - You will return and sojourn with my sister, - Dismissing half your train, come then to me; - I am now from home, and out of that provision - Which shall be needful for your entertainment. - - _Lear._ Return to her, and fifty men dismiss’d? - No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose - To be a comrade with the wolf and owl—— - To wage against the enmity o’ the air, - Necessity’s sharp pinch!——Return with her! - Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took - Our youngest born, I could as well be brought - To knee his throne, and squire-like pension beg - To keep base life afoot.——Return with her! - Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter - To this detested groom. [_Looking on the Steward._ - - _Gonerill._ At your choice, sir. - - _Lear._ Now, I pr’ythee, daughter, do not make me mad; - I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell: - We’ll no more meet, no more see one another:—— - But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; - Or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh, - Which I must needs call mine: thou art a bile, - A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, - In my corrupted blood. But I’ll not chide thee; - Let shame come when it will, I do not call it: - I did not bid the thunder-bearer shoot, - Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove: - Mend when thou canst; be better, at thy leisure: - I can be patient; I can stay with Regan, - I, and my hundred knights. - - _Regan._ Not altogether so, sir; - I look’d not for you yet, nor am provided - For your fit welcome: Give ear, sir, to my sister; - For those that mingle reason with your passion - Must be content to think you old, and so—— - But she knows what she does. - - _Lear._ Is this well spoken now? - - _Regan._ I dare avouch it, sir: What, fifty followers? - Is it not well? What should you need of more? - Yea, or so many? Sith that both charge and danger - Speak ‘gainst so great a number? How, in one house, - Should many people, under two commands, - Hold amity? ’Tis hard; almost impossible. - - _Gonerill._ Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance - From those that she calls servants, or from mine? - - _Regan._ Why not, my lord? If then they chanc’d to slack you, - We would controul them: if you will come to me - (For now I spy a danger) I entreat you - To bring but five-and-twenty; to no more - Will I give place, or notice. - - _Lear._ I gave you all—— - - _Regan._ And in good time you gave it. - - _Lear._ Made you my guardians, my depositaries; - But kept a reservation to be follow’d - With such a number: what, must I come to you - With five-and-twenty, Regan! said you so? - - _Regan._ And speak it again, my lord: no more with me. - - _Lear._ Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour’d, - When others are more wicked; not being the worst, - Stands in some rank of praise:——I’ll go with thee; [_To Gonerill._ - Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty, - And thou art twice her love. - - _Gonerill._ Hear me, my lord; - What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, - To follow in a house, where twice so many - Have a command to tend you? - - _Regan._ What need one? - - _Lear._ O, reason not the need: our basest beggars - Are in the poorest thing superfluous: - Allow not nature more than nature needs, - Man’s life is cheap as beast’s: thou art a lady; - If only to go warm were gorgeous, - Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st; - Which scarcely keeps thee warm.——But, for true need—— - You heavens, give me that patience which I need! - You see me here, you gods; a poor old man, - As full of grief as age; wretched in both! - If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts - Against their father, fool me not so much - To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger! - O, let no woman’s weapons, water-drops, - Stain my man’s cheeks!——No, you unnatural hags, - I will have such revenges on you both, - That all the world shall——I will do such things—— - What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be - The terrors of the earth. You think, I’ll weep: - No, I’ll not weep:—— - I have full cause of weeping; but this heart - Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, - Or e’er I’ll weep:——O, fool, I shall go mad!—— - [_Exeunt Lear, Gloster, Kent, and Fool._’ - -If there is any thing in any author like this yearning of the heart, -these throes of tenderness, this profound expression of all that can be -thought and felt in the most heart-rending situations, we are glad of -it; but it is in some author that we have not read. - -The scene in the storm, where he is exposed to all the fury of the -elements, though grand and terrible, is not so fine, but the moralising -scenes with Mad Tom, Kent, and Gloster, are upon a par with the former. -His exclamation in the supposed trial-scene of his daughters, ‘See the -little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me,’ -his issuing his orders, ‘Let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about -her heart,’ and his reflection when he sees the misery of Edgar, -‘Nothing but his unkind daughters could have brought him to this,’ are -in a style of pathos, where the extremest resources of the imagination -are called in to lay open the deepest movements of the heart, which was -peculiar to Shakespear. In the same style and spirit is his interrupting -the Fool who asks ‘whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman,’ by -answering ‘A king, a king.— - -The indirect part that Gloster takes in these scenes where his -generosity leads him to relieve Lear and resent the cruelty of his -daughters, at the very time that he is himself instigated to seek the -life of his son, and suffering under the sting of his supposed -ingratitude, is a striking accompaniment to the situation of Lear. -Indeed, the manner in which the threads of the story are woven together -is almost as wonderful in the way of art as the carrying on the tide of -passion, still varying and unimpaired, is on the score of nature. Among -the remarkable instances of this kind are Edgar’s meeting with his old -blind father; the deception he practises upon him when he pretends to -lead him to the top of Dover-cliff—‘Come on, sir, here’s the place,’ to -prevent his ending his life and miseries together; his encounter with -the perfidious Steward whom he kills, and his finding the letter from -Gonerill to his brother upon him which leads to the final catastrophe, -and brings the wheel of Justice ‘full circle home’ to the guilty -parties. The bustle and rapid succession of events in the last scenes is -surprising. But the meeting between Lear and Cordelia is by far the most -affecting part of them. It has all the wildness of poetry, and all the -heart-felt truth of nature. The previous account of her reception of the -news of his unkind treatment, her involuntary reproaches to her sisters, -‘Shame, ladies, shame,’ Lear’s backwardness to see his daughter, the -picture of the desolate state to which he is reduced, ‘Alack, ’tis he; -why he was met even now, as mad as the vex’d sea, singing aloud,’ only -prepare the way for and heighten our expectation of what follows, and -assuredly this expectation is not disappointed when through the tender -care of Cordelia he revives and recollects her. - - ‘_Cordelia._ How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty! - - _Lear._ You do me wrong, to take me out o’ the grave: - Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound - Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears - Do scald like molten lead. - - _Cordelia._ Sir, do you know me? - - _Lear._ You are a spirit I know: when did you die? - - _Cordelia._ Still, still, far wide! - - _Physician._ He’s scarce awake; let him alone awhile. - - _Lear._ Where have I been? Where am I?—Fair daylight?—— - I am mightily abus’d.—I should even die with pity, - To see another thus.—I know not what to say.—— - I will not swear these are my hands:—let’s see; - I feel this pin prick. ‘Would I were assured - Of my condition. - - _Cordelia._ O, look upon me, sir, - And hold your hands in benediction o’er me:—— - No, sir, you must not kneel. - - _Lear._ Pray, do not mock me: - I am a very foolish fond old man, - Fourscore and upward; - And, to deal plainly, - I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. - Methinks, I shou’d know you, and know this man; - Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant - What place this is; and all the skill I have - Remembers not these garments; nor I know not - Where I did lodge last night: do not laugh at me; - For, as I am a man, I think this lady - To be my child Cordelia. - - _Cordelia._ And so I am, I am!’ - -Almost equal to this in awful beauty is their consolation of each other -when, after the triumph of their enemies, they are led to prison. - - ‘_Cordelia._ We are not the first, - Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst. - For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; - Myself could else out-frown false fortune’s frown.— - Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters? - - _Lear._ No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison: - We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage: - When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, - And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live, - And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh - At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues - Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too— - Who loses, and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;— - And take upon us the mystery of things, - As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out, - In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones, - That ebb and flow by the moon. - - _Edmund._ Take them away. - - _Lear._ Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, - The gods themselves throw incense.’ - -The concluding events are sad, painfully sad; but their pathos is -extreme. The oppression of the feelings is relieved by the very interest -we take in the misfortunes of others, and by the reflections to which -they give birth. Cordelia is hanged in prison by the orders of the -bastard Edmund, which are known too late to be countermanded, and Lear -dies broken-hearted, lamenting over her. - - ‘_Lear._ And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life: - Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, - And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more, - Never, never, never, never, never!—— - Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.’ - -He dies, and indeed we feel the truth of what Kent says on the occasion— - - ‘Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him, - That would upon the rack of this rough world - Stretch him out longer.’ - -Yet a happy ending has been contrived for this play, which is approved -of by Dr. Johnson and condemned by Schlegel. A better authority than -either, on any subject in which poetry and feeling are concerned, has -given it in favour of Shakespear, in some remarks on the acting of Lear, -with which we shall conclude this account: - - ‘The LEAR of Shakespear cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery - with which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more - inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any - actor can be to represent Lear. The greatness of Lear is not in - corporal dimension, but in intellectual; the explosions of his - passions are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and - disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast - riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and - blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself - neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities - and weakness, the impotence of rage—while we read it, we see not - Lear, but we are Lear;—we are in his mind; we are sustained by a - grandeur, which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the - aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of - reasoning, immethodised from the ordinary purposes of life, but - exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will on - the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to - do with that sublime identification of his age with that of _the - heavens themselves_, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at - the injustice of his children, he reminds them that “they themselves - are old!” What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the - voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all - art, as the tamperings with it shew: it is too hard and stony: it - must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough that - Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate has put - his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his - followers, the shew-men of the scene, to draw it about more easily. - A happy ending!—as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone - through,—the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair - dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If - he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world’s - burden after, why all this pudder and preparation—why torment us - with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of - getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over - again his misused station,—as if at his years and with his - experience, any thing was left but to die.’[68] - -Four things have struck us in reading LEAR: - -1. That poetry is an interesting study, for this reason, that it relates -to whatever is most interesting in human life. Whoever therefore has a -contempt for poetry, has a contempt for himself and humanity. - -2. That the language of poetry is superior to the language of painting; -because the strongest of our recollections relate to feelings, not to -faces. - -3. That the greatest strength of genius is shewn in describing the -strongest passions: for the power of the imagination, in works of -invention, must be in proportion to the force of the natural -impressions, which are the subject of them. - -4. That the circumstance which balances the pleasure against the pain in -tragedy is, that in proportion to the greatness of the evil, is our -sense and desire of the opposite good excited; and that our sympathy -with actual suffering is lost in the strong impulse given to our natural -affections, and carried away with the swelling tide of passion, that -gushes from and relieves the heart. - - - RICHARD II. - -RICHARD II. is a play little known compared with _Richard III._ which -last is a play that every unfledged candidate for theatrical fame chuses -to strut and fret his hour upon the stage in; yet we confess that we -prefer the nature and feeling of the one to the noise and bustle of the -other; at least, as we are so often forced to see it acted. In RICHARD -II. the weakness of the king leaves us leisure to take a greater -interest in the misfortunes of the man. After the first act, in which -the arbitrariness of his behaviour only proves his want of resolution, -we see him staggering under the unlooked-for blows of fortune, bewailing -his loss of kingly power, not preventing it, sinking under the aspiring -genius of Bolingbroke, his authority trampled on, his hopes failing him, -and his pride crushed and broken down under insults and injuries, which -his own misconduct had provoked, but which he has not courage or -manliness to resent. The change of tone and behaviour in the two -competitors for the throne according to their change of fortune, from -the capricious sentence of banishment passed by Richard upon -Bolingbroke, the suppliant offers and modest pretensions of the latter -on his return to the high and haughty tone with which he accepts -Richard’s resignation of the crown after the loss of all his power, the -use which he makes of the deposed king to grace his triumphal progress -through the streets of London, and the final intimation of his wish for -his death, which immediately finds a servile executioner, is marked -throughout with complete effect and without the slightest appearance of -effort. The steps by which Bolingbroke mounts the throne are those by -which Richard sinks into the grave. We feel neither respect nor love for -the deposed monarch; for he is as wanting in energy as in principle: but -we pity him, for he pities himself. His heart is by no means hardened -against himself, but bleeds afresh at every new stroke of mischance, and -his sensibility, absorbed in his own person, and unused to misfortune, -is not only tenderly alive to its own sufferings, but without the -fortitude to bear them. He is, however, human in his distresses; for to -feel pain, and sorrow, weakness, disappointment, remorse and anguish, is -the lot of humanity, and we sympathize with him accordingly. The -sufferings of the man make us forget that he ever was a king. - -The right assumed by sovereign power to trifle at its will with the -happiness of others as a matter of course, or to remit its exercise as a -matter of favour, is strikingly shewn in the sentence of banishment so -unjustly pronounced on Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and in what Bolingbroke -says when four years of his banishment are taken off, with as little -reason. - - ‘How long a time lies in one little word! - Four lagging winters and four wanton springs - End in a word: such is the breath of kings.’ - -A more affecting image of the loneliness of a state of exile can hardly -be given than by what Bolingbroke afterwards observes of his having -‘sighed his English breath in foreign clouds’; or than that conveyed in -Mowbray’s complaint at being banished for life. - - ‘The language I have learned these forty years, - My native English, now I must forego; - And now my tongue’s use is to me no more - Than an unstringed viol or a harp, - Or like a cunning instrument cas’d up, - Or being open, put into his hands - That knows no touch to tune the harmony. - I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, - Too far in years to be a pupil now.’— - -How very beautiful is all this, and at the same time how very _English_ -too! - -RICHARD II. may be considered as the first of that series of English -historical plays, in which ‘is hung armour of the invincible knights of -old,’ in which their hearts seem to strike against their coats of mail, -where their blood tingles for the fight, and words are but the -harbingers of blows. Of this state of accomplished barbarism the appeal -of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is an admirable specimen. Another of these -‘keen encounters of their wits,’ which serve to whet the talkers’ -swords, is where Aumerle answers in the presence of Bolingbroke to the -charge which Bagot brings against him of being an accessory in Gloster’s -death. - - ‘_Fitzwater._ If that thy valour stand on sympathies, - There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine; - By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand’st, - I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak’st it, - That thou wert cause of noble Gloster’s death. - If thou deny’st it twenty times thou liest, - And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart - Where it was forged, with my rapier’s point. - - _Aumerle._ Thou dar’st not, coward, live to see the day. - - _Fitzwater._ Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour. - - _Aumerle._ Fitzwater, thou art damn’d to hell for this. - - _Percy._ Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true, - In this appeal, as thou art all unjust; - And that thou art so, there I throw my gage - To prove it on thee, to the extremest point - Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar’st. - - _Aumerle._ And if I do not, may my hands rot off, - And never brandish more revengeful steel - Over the glittering helmet of my foe. - Who sets me else? By heav’n, I’ll throw at all. - I have a thousand spirits in my breast, - To answer twenty thousand such as you. - - _Surry._ My lord Fitzwater, I remember well - The very time Aumerle and you did talk. - - _Fitzwater._ My lord, ’tis true: you were in presence then: - And you can witness with me, this is true. - - _Surry._ As false, by heav’n, as heav’n itself is true. - - _Fitzwater._ Surry, thou liest. - - _Surry._ Dishonourable boy, - That lie shall lye so heavy on my sword, - That it shall render vengeance and revenge, - Till thou the lie-giver and that lie rest - In earth as quiet as thy father’s skull. - In proof whereof, there is mine honour’s pawn: - Engage it to the trial, if thou dar’st. - - _Fitzwater._ How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse: - If I dare eat or drink, or breathe or live, - I dare meet Surry in a wilderness, - And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, - And lies, and lies: there is my bond of faith, - To tie thee to thy strong correction. - As I do hope to thrive in this new world, - Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal.’ - -The truth is, that there is neither truth nor honour in all these noble -persons: they answer words with words, as they do blows with blows, in -mere self defence: nor have they any principle whatever but that of -courage in maintaining any wrong they dare commit, or any falsehood -which they find it useful to assert. How different were these noble -knights and ‘barons bold’ from their more refined descendants in the -present day, who, instead of deciding questions of right by brute force, -refer everything to convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In point of -any abstract love of truth or justice, they are just the same now that -they were then. - -The characters of old John of Gaunt and of his brother York, uncles to -the King, the one stern and foreboding, the other honest, good-natured, -doing all for the best, and therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. -The speech of the former, in praise of England, is one of the most -eloquent that ever was penned. We should perhaps hardly be disposed to -feed the pampered egotism of our countrymen by quoting this description, -were it not that the conclusion of it (which looks prophetic) may -qualify any improper degree of exultation. - - ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, - This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, - This other Eden, demi-Paradise, - This fortress built by nature for herself - Against infection and the hand of war; - This happy breed of men, this little world, - This precious stone set in the silver sea, - Which serves it in the office of a wall, - Or as a moat defensive to a house - Against the envy of less happy lands: - This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, - This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, - Fear’d for their breed and famous for their birth, - Renowned for their deeds as far from home, - (For Christian service and true chivalry) - As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry - Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s son; - This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, - Dear for her reputation through the world, - Is now leas’d out (I die pronouncing it) - Like to a tenement or pelting farm. - England bound in with the triumphant sea, - Whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge - Of wat’ry Neptune, is bound in with shame, - With inky-blots and rotten parchment bonds. - That England that was wont to conquer others, - Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.’ - -The character of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV. is drawn with a -masterly hand:—patient for occasion, and then steadily availing himself -of it, seeing his advantage afar off, but only seizing on it when he has -it within his reach, humble, crafty, bold, and aspiring, encroaching by -regular but slow degrees, building power on opinion, and cementing -opinion by power. His disposition is first unfolded by Richard himself, -who however is too self-willed and secure to make a proper use of his -knowledge. - - ‘Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green, - Observed his courtship of the common people: - How he did seem to dive into their hearts, - With humble and familiar courtesy, - What reverence he did throw away on slaves; - Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles, - And patient under-bearing of his fortune, - As ‘twere to banish their affections with him. - Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; - A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, - And had the tribute of his supple knee, - With thanks my countrymen, my loving friends; - As were our England in reversion his, - And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.’ - -Afterwards, he gives his own character to Percy, in these words: - - ‘I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure - I count myself in nothing else so happy, - As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends; - And as my fortune ripens with thy love, - It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.’ - -We know how he afterwards kept his promise. His bold assertion of his -own rights, his pretended submission to the king, and the ascendancy -which he tacitly assumes over him without openly claiming it, as soon as -he has him in his power, are characteristic traits of this ambitious and -politic usurper. But the part of Richard himself gives the chief -interest to the play. His folly, his vices, his misfortunes, his -reluctance to part with the crown, his fear to keep it, his weak and -womanish regrets, his starting tears, his fits of hectic passion, his -smothered majesty, pass in succession before us, and make a picture as -natural as it is affecting. Among the most striking touches of pathos -are his wish ‘O that I were a mockery king of snow to melt away before -the sun of Bolingbroke,’ and the incident of the poor groom who comes to -visit him in prison, and tells him how ‘it yearned his heart that -Bolingbroke upon his coronation-day rode on Roan Barbary.’ We shall have -occasion to return hereafter to the character of Richard II. in speaking -of Henry VI. There is only one passage more, the description of his -entrance into London with Bolingbroke, which we should like to quote -here, if it had not been so used and worn out, so thumbed and got by -rote, so praised and painted; but its beauty surmounts all these -considerations. - - - ‘_Duchess._ My lord, you told me you would tell the rest, - When weeping made you break the story off - Of our two cousins coming into London. - - _York._ Where did I leave? - - _Duchess._ At that sad stop, my lord, - Where rude misgovern’d hands, from window tops, - Threw dust and rubbish on king Richard’s head. - - _York._ Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke, - Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, - Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know, - With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course, - While all tongues cried—God save thee, Bolingbroke! - You would have thought the very windows spake, - So many greedy looks of young and old - Through casements darted their desiring eyes - Upon his visage; and that all the walls, - With painted imag’ry, had said at once— - Jesu preserve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke! - Whilst he, from one side to the other turning, - Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed’s neck, - Bespake them thus—I thank you, countrymen: - And thus still doing thus he pass’d along. - - _Duchess._ Alas, poor Richard! where rides he the while? - - _York._ As in a theatre, the eyes of men, - After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage, - Are idly bent on him that enters next, - Thinking his prattle to be tedious: - Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes - Did scowl on Richard; no man cried God save him! - No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home: - But dust was thrown upon his sacred head! - Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off— - His face still combating with tears and smiles, - The badges of his grief and patience— - That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel’d - The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, - And barbarism itself have pitied him.’ - - - HENRY IV - IN TWO PARTS - -If Shakespear’s fondness for the ludicrous sometimes led to faults in -his tragedies (which was not often the case) he has made us amends by -the character of Falstaff. This is perhaps the most substantial comic -character that ever was invented. Sir John carries a most portly -presence in the mind’s eye; and in him, not to speak it profanely, ‘we -behold the fulness of the spirit of wit and humour bodily.’ We are as -well acquainted with his person as his mind, and his jokes come upon us -with double force and relish from the quantity of flesh through which -they make their way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter, or ‘lards -the lean earth as he walks along.’ Other comic characters seem, if we -approach and handle them, to resolve themselves into air, ‘into thin -air’; but this is embodied and palpable to the grossest apprehension: it -lies ‘three fingers deep upon the ribs,’ it plays about the lungs and -the diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoyment. His body is like a -good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of -profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent, and the richness -of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; -an effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others, from -feeling none in itself. Falstaff’s wit is an emanation of a fine -constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and good-nature; an -overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship; a giving vent -to his heart’s ease, and over-contentment with himself and others. He -would not be in character, if he were not so fat as he is; for there is -the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination and the -pampered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. He manures and -nourishes his mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and sugar. -He carves out his jokes, as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, -where there is _cut and come again_; and pours out upon them the oil of -gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain ‘it -snows of meat and drink.’ He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, -and we live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and dozen.—Yet -we are not to suppose that he was a mere sensualist. All this is as much -in imagination as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and -stupify his other faculties, but ‘ascends me into the brain, clears away -all the dull, crude vapours that environ it, and makes it full of -nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.’ His imagination keeps up the ball -after his senses have done with it. He seems to have even a greater -enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of -his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of them, -than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allusions to -eating and drinking, but we never see him at table. He carries his own -larder about with him, and he is himself ‘a tun of man.’ His pulling out -the bottle in the field of battle is a joke to shew his contempt for -glory accompanied with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean -philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, such is his -deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not seem quite -certain whether the account of his hostess’s bill, found in his pocket, -with such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack with only one -halfpenny-worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick to -humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious -caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a -coward, a glutton, etc. and yet we are not offended but delighted with -him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. -He openly assumes all these characters to shew the humourous part of -them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and -convenience, has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an -actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object -to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view than we should -think of bringing an excellent comedian, who should represent him to the -life, before one of the police offices. We only consider the number of -pleasant lights in which he puts certain foibles (the more pleasant as -they are opposed to the received rules and necessary restraints of -society) and do not trouble ourselves about the consequences resulting -from them, for no mischievous consequences do result. Sir John is old as -well as fat, which gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the -character; and by the disparity between his inclinations and his -capacity for enjoyment, makes it still more ludicrous and fantastical. - -The secret of Falstaff’s wit is for the most part a masterly presence of -mind, an absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His -repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instinctive -evasions of every thing that threatens to interrupt the career of his -triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of -all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on -the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment’s -warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or -circumstance, of itself makes light of objections, and provokes the most -extravagant and licentious answers in his own justification. His -indifference to truth puts no check upon his invention, and the more -improbable and unexpected his contrivances are, the more happily does he -seem to be delivered of them, the anticipation of their effect acting as -a stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy. The success of one adventurous -sally gives him spirits to undertake another: he deals always in round -numbers, and his exaggerations and excuses are ‘open, palpable, -monstrous as the father that begets them.’ His dissolute carelessness of -what he says discovers itself in the first dialogue with the Prince. - - ‘_Falstaff._ By the lord, thou say’st true, lad; and is not mine - hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? - - _P. Henry._ As the honey of Hibla, my old lad of the castle; and is - not a buff-jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? - - _Falstaff._ How now, how now, mad wag, what in thy quips and thy - quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff-jerkin? - - _P. Henry._ Why, what a pox have I to do with mine hostess of the - tavern?’ - -In the same scene he afterwards affects melancholy, from pure -satisfaction of heart, and professes reform, because it is the farthest -thing in the world from his thoughts. He has no qualms of conscience, -and therefore would as soon talk of them as of anything else when the -humour takes him. - - ‘_Falstaff._ But Hal, I pr’ythee trouble me no more with vanity. I - would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to - be bought: an old lord of council rated me the other day in the - street about you, sir; but I mark’d him not, and yet he talked very - wisely, and in the street too. - - _P. Henry._ Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the street, and - no man regards it. - - _Falstaff._ O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to - corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm unto me, Hal; God forgive - thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now I am, - if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I - must give over this life, and I will give it over, by the lord; an I - do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damn’d for never a king’s son in - Christendom. - - _P. Henry._ Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack? - - _Falstaff._ Where thou wilt, lad, I’ll make one; an I do not, call - me villain, and baffle me. - - _P. Henry._ I see good amendment of life in thee, from praying to - purse-taking. - - _Falstaff._ Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal. ’Tis no sin for a man - to labour in his vocation.’ - -Of the other prominent passages, his account of his pretended resistance -to the robbers, ‘who grew from four men in buckram into eleven’ as the -imagination of his own valour increased with his relating it, his -getting off when the truth is discovered by pretending he knew the -Prince, the scene in which in the person of the old king he lectures the -prince and gives himself a good character, the soliloquy on honour, and -description of his new-raised recruits, his meeting with the chief -justice, his abuse of the Prince and Poins, who overhear him, to Doll -Tearsheet, his reconciliation with Mrs. Quickly who has arrested him for -an old debt, and whom he persuades to pawn her plate to lend him ten -pounds more, and the scenes with Shallow and Silence, are all -inimitable. Of all of them, the scene in which Falstaff plays the part, -first, of the King, and then of Prince Henry, is the one that has been -the most often quoted. We must quote it once more in illustration of our -remarks. - - ‘_Falstaff._ Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy - time, but also how thou art accompanied: for though the camomile, - the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more - it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have - partly thy mother’s word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a - villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether - lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the - point;——Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the - blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A - question not to be ask’d. Shall the son of England prove a thief, - and take purses? a question not to be ask’d. There is a thing, - Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in - our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do - report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, - now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, - but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also:—and yet there - is a virtuous man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I - know not his name. - - _P. Henry._ What manner of man, an it like your majesty? - - _Falstaff._ A goodly portly man, i’faith, and a corpulent; of a - cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I - think, his age some fifty, or, by’r-lady, inclining to threescore; - and now I do remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should - be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his - looks. If then the fruit may be known by the tree, as the tree by - the fruit, then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that - Falstaff: him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, thou - naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou been this month? - - _P. Henry._ Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, and - I’ll play my father. - - _Falstaff._ Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so - majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a - rabbit-sucker, or a poulterer’s hare. - - _P. Henry._ Well, here I am set. - - _Falstaff._ And here I stand:—judge, my masters. - - _P. Henry._ Now, Harry, whence come you? - - _Falstaff._ My noble lord, from Eastcheap. - - _P. Henry._ The complaints I hear of thee are grievous. - - _Falstaff._ S’blood, my lord, they are false:—nay, I ‘ll tickle ye - for a young prince, i’faith. - - _P. Henry._ Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne’er look on - me. Thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a devil - haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man; a tun of man is thy - companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that - bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that - huge bombard of sack, that stuft cloak-bag of guts, that roasted - Manning-tree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, - that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? - wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and - cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in - craft? wherein crafty, but in villainy? wherein villainous, but in - all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing? - - _Falstaff._ I would, your grace would take me with you; whom means - your grace? - - _P. Henry._ That villainous, abominable mis-leader of youth, - Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan. - - _Falstaff._ My lord, the man I know. - - _P. Henry._ I know thou dost. - - _Falstaff._ But to say, I know more harm in him than in myself, were - to say more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity) his - white hairs do witness it: but that he is (saving your reverence) a - whore-master, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God - help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old - host that I know is damned: if to be fat be to be hated, then - Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto, - banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind - Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and - therefore more valiant, being as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish - not him thy Harry’s company; banish plump Jack, and banish all the - world. - - _P. Henry._ I do, I will. - - [_Knocking; and Hostess and Bardolph go out._ - - _Re-enter_ BARDOLPH, _running_. - - _Bardolph._ O, my lord, my lord; the sheriff, with a most monstrous - watch, is at the door. - - _Falstaff._ Out, you rogue! play out the play: I have much to say in - the behalf of that Falstaff.’ - -One of the most characteristic descriptions of Sir John is that which -Mrs. Quickly gives of him when he asks her ‘What is the gross sum that I -owe thee?’ - - ‘_Hostess._ Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself, and the - money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting - in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire on - Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for - likening his father to a singing man of Windsor; thou didst swear to - me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my - lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the - butcher’s wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in - to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us, she had a good dish of - prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee, - they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was - gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such - poor people; saying, that ere long they should call me madam? And - didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I - put thee now to thy book-oath; deny it, if thou canst.’ - -This scene is to us the most convincing proof of Falstaff’s power of -gaining over the good will of those he was familiar with, except indeed -Bardolph’s somewhat profane exclamation on hearing the account of his -death, ‘Would I were with him, wheresoe’er he is, whether in heaven or -hell.’ - -One of the topics of exulting superiority over others most common in Sir -John’s mouth is his corpulence and the exterior marks of good living -which he carries about him, thus ‘turning his vices into commodity.’ He -accounts for the friendship between the Prince and Poins, from ‘their -legs being both of a bigness’; and compares Justice Shallow to ‘a man -made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ There cannot be a more striking -gradation of character than that between Falstaff and Shallow, and -Shallow and Silence. It seems difficult at first to fall lower than the -squire; but this fool, great as he is, finds an admirer and humble foil -in his cousin Silence. Vain of his acquaintance with Sir John, who makes -a butt of him, he exclaims, ‘Would, cousin Silence, that thou had’st -seen that which this knight and I have seen!’—‘Aye, Master Shallow, we -have heard the chimes at midnight,’ says Sir John. To Falstaff’s -observation ‘I did not think Master Silence had been a man of this -mettle,’ Silence answers, ‘Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere -now.’ What an idea is here conveyed of a prodigality of living? What -good husbandry and economical self-denial in his pleasures? What a stock -of lively recollections? It is curious that Shakespear has ridiculed in -Justice Shallow, who was ‘in some authority under the king,’ that -disposition to unmeaning tautology which is the regal infirmity of later -times, and which, it may be supposed, he acquired from talking to his -cousin Silence, and receiving no answers. - - ‘_Falstaff._ You have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich. - - _Shallow._ Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir - John: marry, good air. Spread Davy, spread Davy. Well said, Davy. - - _Falstaff._ This Davy serves you for good uses. - - _Shallow._ A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet. By the - mass, I have drank too much sack at supper. A good varlet. Now sit - down, now sit down. Come, cousin.’ - -The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we are -made of, the practical wisdom with the seeming fooleries in the whole of -the garden-scene at Shallow’s country-seat, and just before in the -exquisite dialogue between him and Silence on the death of old Double, -have no parallel any where else. In one point of view, they are -laughable in the extreme; in another they are equally affecting, if it -is affecting to shew _what a little thing is human life_, what a poor -forked creature man is! - -The heroic and serious part of these two plays founded on the story of -Henry IV. is not inferior to the comic and farcical. The characters of -Hotspur and Prince Henry are two of the most beautiful and dramatic, -both in themselves and from contrast, that ever were drawn. They are the -essence of chivalry. We like Hotspur the best upon the whole, perhaps -because he was unfortunate.—The characters of their fathers, Henry IV. -and old Northumberland, are kept up equally well. Henry naturally -succeeds by his prudence and caution in keeping what he has got; -Northumberland fails in his enterprise from an excess of the same -quality, and is caught in the web of his own cold, dilatory policy. Owen -Glendower is a masterly character. It as bold and original as it is -intelligible and thoroughly natural. The disputes between him and -Hotspur are managed with infinite address and insight into nature. We -cannot help pointing out here some very beautiful lines, where Hotspur -describes the fight between Glendower and Mortimer. - - ——‘When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank, - In single opposition hand to hand, - He did confound the best part of an hour - In changing hardiment with great Glendower: - Three times they breath’d, and three times did they drink, - Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood; - Who then affrighted with their bloody looks, - Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, - And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, - Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.’ - -The peculiarity and the excellence of Shakespear’s poetry is, that it -seems as if he made his imagination the hand-maid of nature, and nature -the plaything of his imagination. He appears to have been all the -characters, and in all the situations he describes. It is as if either -he had had all their feelings, or had lent them all his genius to -express themselves. There cannot be stronger instances of this than -Hotspur’s rage when Henry IV. forbids him to speak of Mortimer, his -insensibility to all that his father and uncle urge to calm him, and his -fine abstracted apostrophe to honour, ‘By heaven methinks it were an -easy leap to pluck bright honour from the moon,’ etc. After all, -notwithstanding the gallantry, generosity, good temper, and idle freaks -of the mad-cap Prince of Wales, we should not have been sorry, if -Northumberland’s force had come up in time to decide the fate of the -battle at Shrewsbury; at least, we always heartily sympathise with Lady -Percy’s grief, when she exclaims, - - ‘Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers, - To-day might I (hanging on Hotspur’s neck) - Have talked of Monmouth’s grave.’ - -The truth is, that we never could forgive the Prince’s treatment of -Falstaff; though perhaps Shakespear knew what was best, according to the -history, the nature of the times, and of the man. We speak only as -dramatic critics. Whatever terror the French in those days might have of -Henry V. yet, to the readers of poetry at present, Falstaff is the -better man of the two. We think of him and quote him oftener. - - - HENRY V. - -HENRY V. is a very favourite monarch with the English nation, and he -appears to have been also a favourite with Shakespear, who labours hard -to apologise for the actions of the king, by shewing us the character of -the man, as ‘the king of good fellows.’ He scarcely deserves this -honour. He was fond of war and low company:—we know little else of him. -He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious;—idle, or doing mischief. In -private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, -which he subjected to a kind of regal licence; in public affairs, he -seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, -glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal -advice. His principles did not change with his situation and -professions. His adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of -Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of -violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of -Canterbury, who gave the king _carte blanche_, in a genealogical tree of -his family, to rob and murder in circles of latitude and longitude -abroad—to save the possessions of the church at home. This appears in -the speeches in Shakespear, where the hidden motives that actuate -princes and their advisers in war and policy are better laid open than -in speeches from the throne or woolsack. Henry, because he did not know -how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his -neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid -claim to that of France. Because he did not know how to exercise the -enormous power, which had just dropped into his hands, to any one good -purpose, he immediately undertook (a cheap and obvious resource of -sovereignty) to do all the mischief he could. Even if absolute monarchs -had the wit to find out objects of laudable ambition, they could only -‘plume up their wills’ in adhering to the more sacred formula of the -royal prerogative, ‘the right divine of kings to govern wrong,’ because -will is only then triumphant when it is opposed to the will of others, -because the pride of power is only then shewn, not when it consults the -rights and interests of others, but when it insults and tramples on all -justice and all humanity. Henry declares his resolution ‘when France is -his, to bend it to his awe, or break it all to pieces’—a resolution -worthy of a conqueror, to destroy all that he cannot enslave; and what -adds to the joke, he lays all the blame of the consequences of his -ambition on those who will not submit tamely to his tyranny. Such is the -history of kingly power, from the beginning to the end of the -world;—with this difference, that the object of war formerly, when the -people adhered to their allegiance, was to depose kings; the object -latterly, since the people swerved from their allegiance, has been to -restore kings, and to make common cause against mankind. The object of -our late invasion and conquest of France was to restore the legitimate -monarch, the descendant of Hugh Capet, to the throne: Henry V. in his -time made war on and deposed the descendant of this very Hugh Capet, on -the plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate. What would the great -modern catspaw of legitimacy and restorer of divine right have said to -the claim of Henry and the title of the descendants of Hugh Capet? Henry -V. it is true, was a hero, a King of England, and the conqueror of the -king of France. Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He was a -hero, that is, he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure -of destroying thousands of other lives: he was a king of England, but -not a constitutional one, and we only like kings according to the law; -lastly, he was a conqueror of the French king, and for this we dislike -him less than if he had conquered the French people. How then do we like -him? We like him in the play. There he is a very amiable monster, a very -splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at a panther or a young lion in -their cages in the Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their -glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless roar, so we take a -very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical delight in the boasts and -feats of our younger Harry, as they appear on the stage and are confined -to lines of ten syllables; where no blood follows the stroke that wounds -our ears, where no harvest bends beneath horses’ hoofs, no city flames, -no little child is butchered, no dead men’s bodies are found piled on -heaps and festering the next morning—in the orchestra! - -So much for the politics of this play; now for the poetry. Perhaps one -of the most striking images in all Shakespear is that given of war in -the first lines of the Prologue. - - ‘O for a muse of fire, that would ascend - The brightest heaven of invention, - A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, - And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! - Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, - Assume the port of Mars, and _at his heels - Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire - Crouch for employment_.’ - -Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have improved upon this simile. - -The conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of -Ely, relating to the sudden change in the manners of Henry V. is among -the well-known _Beauties_ of Shakespear. It is indeed admirable both for -strength and grace. It has sometimes occurred to us that Shakespear, in -describing ‘the reformation’ of the Prince, might have had an eye to -himself— - - ‘Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, - Since his addiction was to courses vain, - His companies unletter’d, rude and shallow, - His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports; - And never noted in him any study, - Any retirement, any sequestration - From open haunts and popularity. - - _Ely._ The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, - And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best - Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality: - And so the prince obscur’d his contemplation - Under the veil of wildness, which no doubt - Grew like the summer-grass, fastest by night, - Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.’ - -This at least is as probable an account of the progress of the poet’s -mind as we have met with in any of the Essays on the Learning of -Shakespear. - -Nothing can be better managed than the caution which the king gives the -meddling Archbishop, not to advise him rashly to engage in the war with -France, his scrupulous dread of the consequences of that advice, and his -eager desire to hear and follow it. - - ‘And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, - That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, - Or nicely charge your understanding soul - With opening titles miscreate, whose right - Suits not in native colours with the truth. - For God doth know how many now in health - Shall drop their blood, in approbation - Of what your reverence shall incite us to. - Therefore take heed how you impawn your person, - How you awake our sleeping sword of war; - We charge you in the name of God, take heed. - For never two such kingdoms did contend - Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops - Are every one a woe, a sore complaint - ‘Gainst him, whose wrong gives edge unto the swords - That make such waste in brief mortality. - Under this conjuration, speak, my lord; - For we will hear, note, and believe in heart, - That what you speak, is in your conscience wash’d, - As pure as sin with baptism.’ - -Another characteristic instance of the blindness of human nature to -every thing but its own interests, is the complaint made by the king of -‘the ill neighbourhood’ of the Scot in attacking England when she was -attacking France. - - ‘For once the eagle England being in prey, - To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot - Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs.’ - -It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable -picture of the spirit of the _good old times_, the moral inference does -not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or -meanness of the persons committing them. ‘The eagle England’ has a right -‘to be in prey,’ but ‘the weazel Scot’ has none ‘to come sneaking to her -nest,’ which she has left to pounce upon others. Might was right, -without equivocation or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age. The -substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the -refinements and abuses of modern philosophy. - -A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination -in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following:— - - ‘For government, though high and low and lower, - Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, - Congruing in a full and natural close, - Like music. - ——Therefore heaven doth divide - The state of man in divers functions, - Setting endeavour in continual motion; - To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, - Obedience: for so work the honey-bees; - Creatures that by a rule in nature, teach - The art of order to a peopled kingdom. - They have a king, and officers of sorts: - Where some, like magistrates, correct at home; - Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad; - Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, - Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds; - Which pillage they with merry march bring home - To the tent-royal of their emperor; - Who, busied in his majesty, surveys - The singing mason building roofs of gold; - The civil citizens kneading up the honey; - The poor mechanic porters crowding in - Their heavy burthens at his narrow gate; - The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, - Delivering o’er to executors pale - The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,— - That many things, having full reference - To one consent, may work contrariously: - As many arrows, loosed several ways, - Come to one mark; - As many ways meet in one town; - As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; - As many lines close in the dial’s centre; - So may a thousand actions, once a-foot, - End in one purpose, and be all well borne - Without defeat.’ - -HENRY V. is but one of Shakespear’s second-rate plays. Yet by quoting -passages, like this, from his second-rate plays alone, we might make a -volume ‘rich with his praise,’ - - ‘As is the oozy bottom of the sea - With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.’ - -Of this sort are the king’s remonstrance to Scroop, Grey, and Cambridge, -on the detection of their treason, his address to the soldiers at the -siege of Harfleur, and the still finer one before the battle of -Agincourt, the description of the night before the battle, and the -reflections on ceremony put into the mouth of the king. - - ‘O hard condition; twin-born with greatness, - Subjected to the breath of every fool, - Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing! - What infinite heart’s ease must kings neglect, - That private men enjoy; and what have kings, - That privates have not too, save ceremony? - Save general ceremony? - And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? - What kind of God art thou, that suffer’st more - Of mortal griefs, than do thy worshippers? - What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in? - O ceremony, shew me but thy worth! - What is thy soul, O adoration? - Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, - Creating awe and fear in other men? - Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, - Than they in fearing. - What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, - But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, - And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! - Think’st thou, the fiery fever will go out - With titles blown from adulation? - Will it give place to flexure and low bending? - Can’st thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee, - Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, - That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose, - I am a king, that find thee: and I know, - ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, - The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, - The enter-tissu’d robe of gold and pearl, - The farsed title running ‘fore the king, - The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp - That beats upon the high shore of this world, - No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, - Not all these, laid in bed majestical, - Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; - Who, with a body fill’d, and vacant mind, - Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread, - Never sees horrid night, the child of hell: - But like a lacquey, from the rise to set, - Sweats in the eye of Phœbus, and all night - Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn, - Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse; - And follows so the ever-running year - With profitable labour, to his grave: - And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, - Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, - Has the forehand and vantage of a king. - The slave, a member of the country’s peace, - Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots, - What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, - Whose hours the peasant best advantages.’ - -Most of these passages are well known: there is one, which we do not -remember to have seen noticed, and yet it is no whit inferior to the -rest in heroic beauty. It is the account of the deaths of York and -Suffolk. - - ‘_Exeter._ The duke of York commends him to your majesty. - - _K. Henry._ Lives he, good uncle? thrice within this hour, - I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting; - From helmet to the spur all blood he was. - - _Exeter._ In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie, - Larding the plain: and by his bloody side - (Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds) - The noble earl of Suffolk also lies. - Suffolk first died: and York, all haggled o’er, - Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep’d, - And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes, - That bloodily did yawn upon his face; - And cries aloud—_Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk! - My soul shall thine keep company to heaven: - Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly a-breast; - As, in this glorious and well-foughten field, - We kept together in our chivalry!_ - Upon these words I came, and cheer’d him up: - He smil’d me in the face, raught me his hand, - And, with a feeble gripe, says—_Dear my lord, - Commend my service to my sovereign_. - So did he turn, and over Suffolk’s neck - He threw his wounded arm, and kiss’d his lips; - And so, espous’d to death, with blood he seal’d - A testament of noble-ending love.’ - -But we must have done with splendid quotations. The behaviour of the -king, in the difficult and doubtful circumstances in which he is placed, -is as patient and modest as it is spirited and lofty in his prosperous -fortune. The character of the French nobles is also very admirably -depicted; and the Dauphin’s praise of his horse shews the vanity of that -class of persons in a very striking point of view. Shakespear always -accompanies a foolish prince with a satirical courtier, as we see in -this instance. The comic parts of HENRY V. are very inferior to those of -_Henry IV._ Falstaff is dead, and without him, Pistol, Nym, and -Bardolph, are satellites without a sun. Fluellen the Welchman is the -most entertaining character in the piece. He is good-natured, brave, -choleric, and pedantic. His parallel between Alexander and Harry of -Monmouth, and his desire to have ‘some disputations’ with Captain -Macmorris on the discipline of the Roman wars, in the heat of the -battle, are never to be forgotten. His treatment of Pistol is as good as -Pistol’s treatment of his French prisoner. There are two other -remarkable prose passages in this play: the conversation of Henry in -disguise with the three centinels on the duties of a soldier, and his -courtship of Katherine in broken French. We like them both exceedingly, -though the first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the last too -little of the lover. - - - HENRY VI. - IN THREE PARTS - -During the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, England was a -perfect bear-garden, and Shakespear has given us a very lively picture -of the scene. The three parts of HENRY VI. convey a picture of very -little else; and are inferior to the other historical plays. They have -brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is comparatively poor -and meagre, the style ‘flat and unraised.’ There are few lines like the -following:— - - ‘Glory is like a circle in the water; - Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, - Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.’ - -The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of Henry V. -and the story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as scurvily -treated as in Voltaire’s Pucelle. Talbot is a very magnificent sketch: -there is something as formidable in this portrait of him, as there would -be in a monumental figure of him or in the sight of the armour which he -wore. The scene in which he visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks -to entrap him, is a very spirited one, and his description of his own -treatment while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable. - - ‘_Salisbury._ Yet tell’st thou not how thou wert entertain’d. - - _Talbot._ With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts. - In open market-place produced they me, - To be a public spectacle to all. - Here, said they, is the terror of the French, - The scarecrow that affrights our children so. - Then broke I from the officers that led me, - And with my nails digg’d stones out of the ground, - To hurl at the beholders of my shame. - My grisly countenance made others fly, - None durst come near for fear of sudden death. - In iron walls they deem’d me not secure: - So great a fear my name amongst them spread, - That they suppos’d I could rend bars of steel, - And spurn in pieces posts of adamant. - Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had: - They walk’d about me every minute-while; - And if I did but stir out of my bed, - Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.’ - -The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles -during the minority of Henry, and the death of Gloucester, the good Duke -Humphrey. The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in -the group: the account of his death is one of our author’s -master-pieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on the loss -of the provinces of France by the King’s marriage with Margaret of -Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke of York, the -father of Richard III. are also very ably developed. Among the episodes, -the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection of the impostor Simcox -are truly edifying. - -The third part describes Henry’s loss of his crown: his death takes -place in the last act, which is usually thrust into the common acting -play of _Richard III._ The character of Gloucester, afterwards King -Richard, is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs -and long-reaching ambition are fully described in his soliloquy in the -third act, beginning, ‘Aye, Edward will use women honourably.’ Henry VI. -is drawn as distinctly as his high-spirited Queen, and notwithstanding -the very mean figure which Henry makes as a King, we still feel more -respect for him than for his wife. - -We have already observed that Shakespear was scarcely more remarkable -for the force and marked contrasts of his characters than for the truth -and subtlety with which he has distinguished those which approached the -nearest to each other. For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly more -distinct from that of Iago than that of Desdemona is shewn to be from -Æmilia’s; the ambition of Macbeth is as distinct from the ambition of -Richard III. as it is from the meekness of Duncan; the real madness of -Lear is as different from the feigned madness of Edgar[69] as from the -babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in Falstaff and -Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious than the -gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and -again, the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little confounded with that -of Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual and -philosophic cowardice of the Knight is with the pitiful and cringing -cowardice of Parolles. All these several personages were as different in -Shakespear as they would have been in themselves: his imagination -borrowed from the life, and every circumstance, object, motive, passion, -operated there as it would in reality, and produced a world of men and -women as distinct, as true and as various as those that exist in nature. -The peculiar property of Shakespear’s imagination was this truth, -accompanied with the unconsciousness of nature: indeed, imagination to -be perfect must be unconscious, at least in production; for nature is -so.—We shall attempt one example more in the characters of Richard II. -and Henry VI. - -The characters and situations of both these persons were so nearly -alike, that they would have been completely confounded by a common-place -poet. Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakespear. Both were kings, -and both unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing to their -mismanagement and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless, wilful abuse -of power, the other from an indifference to it. The manner in which they -bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly to the causes which led to -them. The one is always lamenting the loss of his power which he has not -the spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret that he had ever -been king, and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trouble; the -effeminacy of the one is that of a voluptuary, proud, revengeful, -impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the -effeminacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured mind, -naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, -and who wishes to pass his time in monkish indolence and -contemplation.—Richard bewails the loss of the kingly power only as it -was the means of gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only -as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the advantages to be -derived from possessing it than afraid of exercising it wrong. In -knighting a young soldier, he gives him ghostly advice— - - ‘Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight, - And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right.’ - -Richard II. in the first speeches of the play betrays his real -character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke’s -rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check, he exclaims— - - ‘Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords: - This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones - Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king - Shall faulter under proud rebellious arms. - - . . . . . . - - Not all the water in the rough rude sea - Can wash the balm from an anointed king; - The breath of worldly man cannot depose - The Deputy elected by the Lord. - For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest, - To lift sharp steel against our golden crown, - Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay - A glorious angel; then if angels fight, - Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.’ - -Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first -news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as the peculiar -favourite of Providence vanishes into air. - - ‘But now the blood of twenty thousand men - Did triumph in my face, and they are fled. - All souls that will be safe fly from my side; - For time hath set a blot upon my pride.’ - -Immediately after, however, recollecting that ‘cheap defence’ of the -divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion, he is for arming his -name against his enemies. - - ‘Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep’st; - Is not the King’s name forty thousand names? - Arm, arm, my name: a puny subject strikes - At thy great glory.’ - -King Henry does not make any such vapouring resistance to the loss of -his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which he is -neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of -the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is -pleased when the odds prove against him. - -When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites, Bushy, Bagot, -and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further efforts, -and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his grief and his -despair, in that fine speech which has been so often quoted:— - - ‘_Aumerle._ Where is the duke my father, with his power? - - _K. Richard._ No matter where: of comfort no man speak: - Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, - Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes - Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth! - Let’s chuse executors, and talk of wills: - And yet not so—for what can we bequeath, - Save our deposed bodies to the ground? - Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s, - And nothing can we call our own but death, - And that small model of the barren earth, - Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. - For heaven’s sake let us sit upon the ground, - And tell sad stories of the death of Kings: - How some have been depos’d, some slain in war; - Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess’d; - Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d; - All murder’d:—for within the hollow crown, - That rounds the mortal temples of a king, - Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits, - Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp! - Allowing him a breath, a little scene - To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks; - Infusing him with self and vain conceit— - As if this flesh, which walls about our life, - Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus, - Comes at the last, and, with a little pin, - Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king! - Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood - With solemn reverence; throw away respect, - Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, - For you have but mistook me all this while: - I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief, - Need friends, like you;—subjected thus, - How can you say to me—I am a king?’ - -There is as little sincerity afterwards in his affected resignation to -his fate, as there is fortitude in this exaggerated picture of his -misfortunes before they have happened. - -When Northumberland comes back with the message from Bolingbroke, he -exclaims, anticipating the result,— - - ‘What must the king do now? Must he submit? - The king shall do it: must he be depos’d? - The king shall be contented; must he lose - The name of king? O’ God’s name let it go. - I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads; - My gorgeous palace for a hermitage; - My gay apparel for an alms-man’s gown; - My figur’d goblets for a dish of wood; - My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff; - My subjects for a pair of carved saints, - And my large kingdom for a little grave— - A little, little grave, an obscure grave.’ - -How differently is all this expressed in King Henry’s soliloquy, during -the battle with Edward’s party:— - - ‘This battle fares like to the morning’s war, - When dying clouds contend with growing light, - What time the shepherd blowing of his nails, - Can neither call it perfect day or night. - Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down; - To whom God will, there be the victory! - For Margaret my Queen and Clifford too - Have chid me from the battle, swearing both - They prosper best of all when I am thence. - Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so. - For what is in this world but grief and woe? - O God! methinks it were a happy life - To be no better than a homely swain, - To sit upon a hill as I do now, - To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, - Thereby to see the minutes how they run: - How many make the hour full complete, - How many hours bring about the day, - How many days will finish up the year, - How many years a mortal man may live. - When this is known, then to divide the times; - So many hours must I tend my flock, - So many hours must I take my rest, - So many hours must I contemplate, - So many hours must I sport myself; - So many days my ewes have been with young, - So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, - So many months ere I shall shear the fleece: - So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years - Past over, to the end they were created, - Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. - Ah! what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely! - Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade - To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, - Than doth a rich embroidered canopy - To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery? - O yes it doth, a thousand fold it doth. - And to conclude, the shepherds’ homely curds, - His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, - His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade, - All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, - Is far beyond a prince’s delicates, - His viands sparkling in a golden cup, - His body couched in a curious bed, - When care, mistrust, and treasons wait on him.’ - -This is a true and beautiful description of a naturally quiet and -contented disposition, and not, like the former, the splenetic effusion -of disappointed ambition. - -In the last scene of _Richard II._ his despair lends him courage: he -beats the keeper, slays two of his assassins, and dies with imprecations -in his mouth against Sir Pierce Exton, who ‘had staggered his royal -person.’ Henry, when he is seized by the deer-stealers, only reads them -a moral lecture on the duty of allegiance and the sanctity of an oath; -and when stabbed by Gloucester in the tower, reproaches him with his -crimes, but pardons him his own death. - - - RICHARD III. - -RICHARD III. may be considered as properly a stage-play: it belongs to -the theatre, rather than to the closet. We shall therefore criticise it -chiefly with a reference to the manner in which we have seen it -performed. It is the character in which Garrick came out: it was the -second character in which Mr. Kean appeared, and in which he acquired -his fame. Shakespear we have always with us: actors we have only for a -few seasons; and therefore some account of them may be acceptable, if -not to our cotemporaries, to those who come after us, if ‘that rich and -idle personage, Posterity,’ should deign to look into our writings. - -It is possible to form a higher conception of the character of Richard -than that given by Mr. Kean: but we cannot imagine any character -represented with greater distinctness and precision, more perfectly -_articulated_ in every part. Perhaps indeed there is too much of what is -technically called execution. When we first saw this celebrated actor in -the part, we thought he sometimes failed from an exuberance of manner, -and dissipated the impression of the general character by the variety of -his resources. To be complete, his delineation of it should have more -solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feeling, with somewhat less -brilliancy, with fewer glancing lights, pointed transitions, and -pantomimic evolutions. - -The Richard of Shakespear is towering and lofty; equally impetuous and -commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and treacherous; -confident in his strength as well as in his cunning; raised high by his -birth, and higher by his talents and his crimes; a royal usurper, a -princely hypocrite, a tyrant, and a murderer of the house of -Plantagenet. - - ‘But I was born so high: - Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top, - And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.’ - -The idea conveyed in these lines (which are indeed omitted in the -miserable medley acted for RICHARD III.) is never lost sight of by -Shakespear, and should not be out of the actor’s mind for a moment. The -restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but -to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his power -of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use -of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself -from remorse and infamy. - -If Mr. Kean does not entirely succeed in concentrating all the lines of -the character, as drawn by Shakespear, he gives an animation, vigour, -and relief to the part which we have not seen equalled. He is more -refined than Cooke; more bold, varied, and original than Kemble in the -same character. In some parts he is deficient in dignity, and -particularly in the scenes of state business, he has by no means an air -of artificial authority. There is at times an aspiring elevation, an -enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of attaining the crown, and at -others a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he already -clenched the bauble, and held it in his grasp. The courtship scene with -Lady Anne is an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy. The -progress of wily adulation, of encroaching humility, is finely marked by -his action, voice and eye. He seems, like the first Tempter, to approach -his prey, secure of the event, and as if success had smoothed his way -before him. The late Mr. Cooke’s manner of representing this scene was -more vehement, hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty. This, though -more natural in general, was less in character in this particular -instance. Richard should woo less as a lover than as an actor—to shew -his mental superiority, and power of making others the playthings of his -purposes. Mr. Kean’s attitude in leaning against the side of the stage -before he comes forward to address Lady Anne, is one of the most -graceful and striking ever witnessed on the stage. It would do for -Titian to paint. The frequent and rapid transition of his voice from the -expression of the fiercest passion to the most familiar tones of -conversation was that which gave a peculiar grace of novelty to his -acting on his first appearance. This has been since imitated and -caricatured by others, and he himself uses the artifice more sparingly -than he did. His bye-play is excellent. His manner of bidding his -friends ‘Good night,’ after pausing with the point of his sword, drawn -slowly backward and forward on the ground, as if considering the plan of -the battle next day, is a particularly happy and natural thought. He -gives to the two last acts of the play the greatest animation and -effect. He fills every part of the stage; and makes up for the -deficiency of his person by what has been sometimes objected to as an -excess of action. The concluding scene in which he is killed by Richmond -is the most brilliant of the whole. He fights at last like one drunk -with wounds; and the attitude in which he stands with his hands -stretched out, after his sword is wrested from him, has a preternatural -and terrific grandeur, as if his will could not be disarmed, and the -very phantoms of his despair had power to kill.—Mr. Kean has since in a -great measure effaced the impression of his Richard III. by the superior -efforts of his genius in Othello (his master-piece), in the murder-scene -in Macbeth, in Richard II., in Sir Giles Overreach, and lastly in -Oroonoko; but we still like to look back to his first performance of -this part, both because it first assured his admirers of his future -success, and because we bore our feeble but, at that time, not useless -testimony to the merits of this very original actor, on which the town -was considerably divided for no other reason than because they _were_ -original. - -The manner in which Shakespear’s plays have been generally altered or -rather mangled by modern mechanists, is a disgrace to the English stage. -The patch-work RICHARD III. which is acted under the sanction of his -name, and which was manufactured by Cibber, is a striking example of -this remark. - -The play itself is undoubtedly a very powerful effusion of Shakespear’s -genius. The ground-work of the character of Richard, that mixture of -intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespear delighted -to shew his strength—gave full scope as well as temptation to the -exercise of his imagination. The character of his hero is almost every -where predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original -play is however too long for representation, and there are some few -scenes which might be better spared than preserved, and by omitting -which it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for -altering Shakespear is to retrench certain passages which may be -considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or -transpose any thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and -the mutual contrast and combination of the _dramatis personæ_, are in -general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the -expression of the passions. - -This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the -most important and striking passages in the principal character have -been omitted, to make room for idle and misplaced extracts from other -plays; the only intention of which seems to have been to make the -character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible. It is -apparently for no other purpose than to make Gloucester stab King Henry -on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of the character in the -opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the -uxorious king (taken from another play);—we say _tedious_, because it -interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by -having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the -mild, well-meaning monarch. The passages which the unfortunate Henry has -to recite are beautiful and pathetic in themselves, but they have -nothing to do with the world that Richard has to ‘bustle in.’ In the -same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and Lady -Anne (when his wife) interpolated without any authority, merely to -gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same -perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal struggle, is raised -up by some Galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any -motive but pure malignity, which Shakespear has so properly put into the -mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy’s death. To make room for -these worse than needless additions, many of the most striking passages -in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the -prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which -are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence’s dream, etc. but -on those which are important to the understanding of the character, and -peculiarly adapted for stage-effect. We will give the following as -instances among several others. The first is the scene where Richard -enters abruptly to the queen and her friends to defend himself:— - - ‘_Gloucester._ They do me wrong, and I will not endure it. - Who are they that complain unto the king, - That I forsooth am stern, and love them not? - By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly, - That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours: - Because I cannot flatter and look fair, - Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, - Duck with French nods, and apish courtesy, - I must be held a rancorous enemy. - Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm, - But thus his simple truth must be abus’d - With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks? - - _Gray._ To whom in all this presence speaks your grace? - - _Gloucester._ To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace; - When have I injur’d thee, when done thee wrong? - Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction? - A plague upon you all!’ - -Nothing can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to -meekness and simplicity in this address. Again, the versatility and -adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical -conversation with Brakenbury:— - - ‘_Brakenbury._ I beseech your graces both to pardon me. - His majesty hath straitly given in charge, - That no man shall have private conference, - Of what degree soever, with your brother. - - _Gloucester._ E’en so, and please your worship, Brakenbury. - You may partake of any thing we say: - We speak no treason, man—we say the king - Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen - Well strook in years, fair, and not jealous. - We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot, - A cherry lip, - A bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue; - That the queen’s kindred are made gentlefolks. - How say you, sir? Can you deny all this? - - _Brakenbury._ With this, my lord, myself have nought to do. - - _Gloucester._ What, fellow, naught to do with mistress Shore? - I tell you, sir, he that doth naught with her, - Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone. - - _Brakenbury._ What one, my lord? - - _Gloucester._ Her husband, knave—would’st thou betray me?’ - -The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the queen’s kinsmen is -also a master-piece. One of the finest strokes in the play, and which -serves to shew as much as any thing the deep, plausible manners of -Richard, is the unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when -the former is plotting his death, and when that very appearance of -cordiality and good-humour on which Hastings builds his confidence -arises from Richard’s consciousness of having betrayed him to his ruin. -This, with the whole character of Hastings, is omitted. - -Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original play are the -farewell apostrophe of the queen to the Tower, where the children are -shut up from her, and Tyrrel’s description of their death. We will -finish our quotations with them. - - ‘_Queen._ Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower; - Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes, - Whom envy hath immured within your walls; - Rough cradle for such little pretty ones, - Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen play-fellow, - For tender princes!’ - -The other passage is the account of their death by Tyrrel:— - - ‘Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn - To do this piece of ruthless butchery, - Albeit they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs,— - Melting with tenderness and mild compassion, - Wept like to children in their death’s sad story: - O thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes; - Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another - Within their innocent alabaster arms; - Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, - And in that summer beauty kissed each other; - A book of prayers on their pillow lay, - Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind: - But oh the devil!—there the villain stopped; - When Dighton thus told on—we smothered - The most replenished sweet work of nature, - That from the prime creation ere she framed.’ - -These are some of those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the life, -to the very height of fancy and nature, which our Shakespear alone could -give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as -proper for the stage: we should indeed be loth to trust them in the -mouth of almost any actor: but we should wish them to be retained in -preference at least to the fantoccini exhibition of the young princes, -Edward and York, bandying childish wit with their uncle. - - - HENRY VIII. - -This play contains little action or violence of passion, yet it has -considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful cast, and some of -the most striking passages in the author’s works. The character of Queen -Katherine is the most perfect delineation of matronly dignity, -sweetness, and resignation, that can be conceived. Her appeals to the -protection of the king, her remonstrances to the cardinals, her -conversations with her women, shew a noble and generous spirit -accompanied with the utmost gentleness of nature. What can be more -affecting than her answer to Campeius and Wolsey, who come to visit her -as pretended friends. - - ——‘Nay, forsooth, my friends, - They that must weigh out my afflictions, - They that my trust must grow to, live not here; - They are, as all my comforts are, far hence, - In mine own country, lords.’ - -Dr. Johnson observes of this play, that ‘the meek sorrows and virtuous -distress of Katherine have furnished some scenes, which may be justly -numbered among the greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of -Shakespear comes in and goes out with Katherine. Every other part may be -easily conceived and easily written.’ This is easily said; but with all -due deference to so great a reputed authority as that of Johnson, it is -not true. For instance, the scene of Buckingham led to execution is one -of the most affecting and natural in Shakespear, and one to which there -is hardly an approach in any other author. Again, the character of -Wolsey, the description of his pride and of his fall, are inimitable, -and have, besides their gorgeousness of effect, a pathos, which only the -genius of Shakespear could lend to the distresses of a proud, bad man, -like Wolsey. There is a sort of child-like simplicity in the very -helplessness of his situation, arising from the recollection of his past -overbearing ambition. After the cutting sarcasms of his enemies on his -disgrace, against which he bears up with a spirit conscious of his own -superiority, he breaks out into that fine apostrophe— - - ‘Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness! - This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth - The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, - And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; - The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; - And—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely - His greatness is a ripening—nips his root, - And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur’d, - Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, - These many summers in a sea of glory; - But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride - At length broke under me; and now has left me, - Weary and old with service, to the mercy - Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. - Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate ye! - I feel my heart new open’d: O how wretched - Is that poor man, that hangs on princes’ favours! - There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, - That sweet aspect of princes, and our ruin, - More pangs and fears than war and women have; - And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, - Never to hope again!’— - -There is in this passage, as well as in the well-known dialogue with -Cromwell which follows, something which stretches beyond commonplace; -nor is the account which Griffiths gives of Wolsey’s death less -Shakespearian; and the candour with which Queen Katherine listens to the -praise of ‘him whom of all men while living she hated most’ adds the -last graceful finishing to her character. - -Among other images of great individual beauty might be mentioned the -description of the effect of Ann Boleyn’s presenting herself to the -crowd at her coronation. - - ——‘While her grace sat down - To rest awhile, some half an hour or so, - In a rich chair of state, opposing freely - The beauty of her person to the people. - Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman - That ever lay by man. Which when the people - Had the full view of, _such a noise arose - As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, - As loud and to as many tunes_.’ - -The character of Henry VIII. is drawn with great truth and spirit. It is -like a very disagreeable portrait, sketched by the hand of a master. His -gross appearance, his blustering demeanour, his vulgarity, his -arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of -common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines. His -traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the -picture. The authoritative expletive, ‘Ha!’ with which he intimates his -indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound -that breaks from a thunder-cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our -history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself all the vices of -barbarism and refinement, without their virtues. Other kings before him -(such as Richard III.) were tyrants and murderers out of ambition or -necessity: they gained or established unjust power by violent means: -they destroyed their enemies, or those who barred their access to the -throne or made its tenure insecure. But Henry VIII.‘s power is most -fatal to those whom he loves: he is cruel and remorseless to pamper his -luxurious appetites: bloody and voluptuous; an amorous murderer; an -uxorious debauchee. His hardened insensibility to the feelings of others -is strengthened by the most profligate self-indulgence. The religious -hypocrisy, under which he masks his cruelty and his lust, is admirably -displayed in the speech in which he describes the first misgivings of -his conscience and its increasing throes and terrors, which have induced -him to divorce his queen. The only thing in his favour in this play is -his treatment of Cranmer: there is also another circumstance in his -favour, which is his patronage of Hans Holbein.—It has been said of -Shakespear—‘No maid could live near such a man.’ It might with as good -reason be said—‘No king could live near such a man.’ His eye would have -penetrated through the pomp of circumstance and the veil of opinion. As -it is, he has represented such persons to the life—his plays are in this -respect the glass of history—he has done them the same justice as if he -had been a privy counsellor all his life, and in each successive reign. -Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are -very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are ‘the -best of kings.’ It is their power, their splendour, it is the -apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their -hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgment of their -favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance -and of interest; and seen _as they were_, their power and their -pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous. The charge brought against -modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty is unjust, because it might as -well be brought against other things. No reader of history can be a -lover of kings. We have often wondered that Henry VIII. as he is drawn -by Shakespear, and as we have seen him represented in all the bloated -deformity of mind and person, is not hooted from the English stage. - - - KING JOHN - -KING JOHN is the last of the historical plays we shall have to speak -of; and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to indulge our -imaginations, we had rather do it upon an imaginary theme; if we are -to find subjects for the exercise of our pity and terror, we prefer -seeking them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a -_soreness_ to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know -that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes, we are treading -upon real ground, and recollect that the poet’s dream ‘_denoted a -foregone conclusion_‘—irrevocable ills, not conjured up by fancy, but -placed beyond the reach of poetical justice. That the treachery of -King John, the death of Arthur, the grief of Constance, had a real -truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it hangs a leaden -weight on the heart and the imagination. Something whispers us that we -have no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the -truth of things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies. ‘To -consider thus’ may be ‘to consider too curiously’; but still we think -that the actual truth of the particular events, in proportion as we -are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the -dignity of tragedy. - -KING JOHN has all the beauties of language and all the richness of the -imagination to relieve the painfulness of the subject. The character of -King John himself is kept pretty much in the background; it is only -marked in by comparatively slight indications. The crimes he is tempted -to commit are such as are thrust upon him rather by circumstances and -opportunity than of his own seeking: he is here represented as more -cowardly than cruel, and as more contemptible than odious. The play -embraces only a part of his history. There are however few characters on -the stage that excite more disgust and loathing. He has no intellectual -grandeur or strength of character to shield him from the indignation -which his immediate conduct provokes: he stands naked and defenceless, -in that respect, to the worst we can think of him: and besides, we are -impelled to put the very worst construction on his meanness and cruelty -by the tender picture of the beauty and helplessness of the object of -it, as well as by the frantic and heart-rending pleadings of maternal -despair. We do not forgive him the death of Arthur, because he had too -late revoked his doom and tried to prevent it; and perhaps because he -has himself repented of his black design, our _moral sense_ gains -courage to hate him the more for it. We take him at his word, and think -his purposes must be odious indeed, when he himself shrinks back from -them. The scene in which King John suggests to Hubert the design of -murdering his nephew is a master-piece of dramatic skill, but it is -still inferior, very inferior to the scene between Hubert and Arthur, -when the latter learns the orders to put out his eyes. If any thing ever -was penned, heart-piercing, mixing the extremes of terror and pity, of -that which shocks and that which soothes the mind, it is this scene. We -will give it entire, though perhaps it is tasking the reader’s sympathy -too much. - - ‘_Enter_ HUBERT _and Executioner_. - - _Hubert._ Heat me these irons hot, and look you stand - Within the arras; when I strike my foot - Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth - And bind the boy, which you shall find with me, - Fast to the chair: be heedful: hence, and watch. - - _Executioner._ I hope your warrant will bear out the deed. - - _Hubert._ Uncleanly scruples! fear not you; look to’t.— - Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you. - - _Enter_ ARTHUR. - - _Arthur._ Good morrow, Hubert. - - _Hubert._ Morrow, little Prince. - - _Arthur._ As little prince (having so great a title - To be more prince) as may be. You are sad. - - _Hubert._ Indeed I have been merrier. - - _Arthur._ Mercy on me! - Methinks no body should be sad but I; - Yet I remember when I was in France, - Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, - Only for wantonness. By my Christendom, - So were I out of prison, and kept sheep, - I should be merry as the day is long. - And so I would be here, but that I doubt - My uncle practises more harm to me. - He is afraid of me, and I of him. - - Is it my fault that I was Geoffrey’s son? - Indeed it is not, and I would to heav’n - I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert. - - _Hubert._ If I talk to him, with his innocent prate - He will awake my mercy, which lies dead; - Therefore I will be sudden, and dispatch. [_Aside._ - - _Arthur._ Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day? - In sooth, I would you were a little sick, - That I might sit all night and watch with you. - Alas, I love you more than you do me. - - _Hubert._ His words do take possession of my bosom. - Read here, young Arthur— [_Shewing a paper._ - How now, foolish rheum, [_Aside._ - Turning dis-piteous torture out of door! - I must be brief, lest resolution drop - Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.— - Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ? - - _Arthur._ Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect. - Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes? - - _Hubert._ Young boy, I must. - - _Arthur._ And will you? - - _Hubert._ And I will. - - _Arthur._ Have you the heart? When your head did but ache, - I knit my handkerchief about your brows, - (The best I had, a princess wrought it me) - And I did never ask it you again; - And with my hand at midnight held your head; - And like the watchful minutes to the hour, - Still and anon chear’d up the heavy time, - Saying, what lack you? and where lies your grief? - Or, what good love may I perform for you? - Many a poor man’s son would have lain still, - And ne’er have spoke a loving word to you; - But you at your sick service had a prince. - Nay, you may think my love was crafty love, - And call it cunning. Do, and if you will: - If heav’n be pleas’d that you must use me ill, - Why then you must——Will you put out mine eyes? - These eyes, that never did, and never shall, - So much as frown on you? - - _Hubert._ I’ve sworn to do it; - And with hot irons must I burn them out. - - _Arthur._ Oh if an angel should have come to me, - And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes, - I would not have believ’d a tongue but Hubert’s. - - _Hubert._ Come forth; do as I bid you. [_Stamps, and the men enter._ - - _Arthur._ O save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out - Ev’n with the fierce looks of these bloody men. - - _Hubert._ Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here. - - - _Arthur._ Alas, what need you be so boist’rous rough? - I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. - For heav’n’s sake, Hubert, let me not be bound! - Nay, hear me, Hubert! drive these men away, - And I will sit as quiet as a lamb: - I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, - Nor look upon the iron angrily: - Thrust but these men away, and I’ll forgive you, - Whatever torment you do put me to. - - _Hubert._ Go, stand within; let me alone with him. - - _Executioner._ I am best pleas’d to be from such a deed. [_Exit._ - - _Arthur._ Alas, I then have chid away my friend. - He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart; - Let him come back, that his compassion may - Give life to yours. - - _Hubert._ Come, boy, prepare yourself. - - _Arthur._ Is there no remedy? - - _Hubert._ None, but to lose your eyes. - - _Arthur._ O heav’n! that there were but a mote in yours, - A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wand’ring hair, - Any annoyance in that precious sense! - Then, feeling what small things are boist’rous there, - Your vile intent must needs seem horrible. - - _Hubert._ Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue. - - _Arthur._ Let me not hold my tongue; let me not, Hubert; - Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, - So I may keep mine eyes. O spare mine eyes! - Though to no use, but still to look on you. - Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold, - And would not harm me. - - _Hubert._ I can heat it, boy. - - _Arthur._ No, in good sooth, the fire is dead with grief, - Being create for comfort, to be us’d - In undeserv’d extremes; see else yourself, - There is no malice in this burning coal; - The breath of heav’n hath blown its spirit out, - And strew’d repentant ashes on its head. - - _Hubert._ But with my breath I can revive it, boy. - - _Arthur._ All things that you shall use to do me wrong, - Deny their office; only you do lack - That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend, - Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. - - _Hubert._ Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyes - For all the treasure that thine uncle owns: - Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy, - With this same very iron to burn them out. - - _Arthur._ O, now you look like Hubert. All this while - You were disguised. - - _Hubert._ Peace; no more. Adieu, - - Your uncle must not know but you are dead. - I’ll fill these dogged spies with false reports: - And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure, - That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, - Will not offend thee. - - _Arthur._ O heav’n! I thank you, Hubert. - - _Hubert._ Silence, no more; go closely in with me; - Much danger do I undergo for thee. [_Exeunt._’ - -His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his prison walls, -excites the utmost pity for his innocence and friendless situation, and -well justifies the exaggerated denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert, -whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed. - - ‘There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell - As thou shalt be, if thou did’st kill this child. - —If thou did’st but consent - To this most cruel act, do but despair: - And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread - That ever spider twisted from her womb - Will strangle thee; a rush will be a beam - To hang thee on: or would’st thou drown thyself, - Put but a little water in a spoon, - And it shall be as all the ocean, - Enough to stifle such a villain up.’ - -The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desperate by the fickleness -of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in -proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely -expressed than in Constance. The dignity of her answer to King Philip, -when she refuses to accompany his messenger, ‘To me and to the state of -my great grief, let kings assemble,’ her indignant reproach to Austria -for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, ‘that love of misery,’ -however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, -where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal -in these words:— - - ‘Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say - That we shall see and know our friends in heav’n: - If that be, I shall see my boy again, - For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, - To him that did but yesterday suspire, - There was not such a gracious creature born. - But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud, - And chase the native beauty from his cheek, - And he will look as hollow as a ghost, - As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit, - And so he’ll die; and rising so again, - When I shall meet him in the court of heav’n, - I shall not know him; therefore never, never - Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. - - _K. Philip._ You are as fond of grief as of your child. - - _Constance._ Grief fills the room up of my absent child: - Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; - Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, - Remembers me of all his gracious parts; - Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. - Then have I reason to be fond of grief.’ - -The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen Katherine to her own -wrongs, and the wild, uncontroulable affliction of Constance for the -wrongs which she sustains as a mother, is no less naturally conceived -than it is ably sustained throughout these two wonderful characters. - -The accompaniment of the comic character of the Bastard was well chosen -to relieve the poignant agony of suffering, and the cold cowardly policy -of behaviour in the principal characters of this play. Its spirit, -invention, volubility of tongue and forwardness in action, are -unbounded. _Aliquando sufflaminandus erat_, says Ben Jonson of -Shakespear. But we should be sorry if Ben Jonson had been his licenser. -We prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infinitely to all Jonson’s -laborious caution. The character of the Bastard’s comic humour is the -same in essence as that of other comic characters in Shakespear; they -always run on with good things and are never exhausted; they are always -daring and successful. They have words at will, and a flow of wit like a -flow of animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge and the -others is that he is a soldier, and brings his wit to bear upon action, -is courageous with his sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his -gallantry by his jokes, his enemies feeling the sharpness of his blows -and the sting of his sarcasms at the same time. Among his happiest -sallies are his descanting on the composition of his own person, his -invective against ‘commodity, tickling commodity,’ and his expression of -contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who had killed his father, which -begins in jest but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of -Angiers shews that his resources were not confined to verbal -retorts.—The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps, of kings, -nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the other plays -we have gone through, and we shall not go into a disgusting repetition. - -This, like the other plays taken from English history, is written in a -remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of the -tragedies, _Macbeth_, for instance. The passages consist of a series of -single lines, not running into one another. This peculiarity in the -versification, which is most common in the three parts of _Henry VI._ -has been assigned as a reason why those plays were not written by -Shakespear. But the same structure of verse occurs in his other -undoubted plays, as in _Richard II._ and in KING JOHN. The following are -instances:— - - ‘That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch, - Is near to England; look upon the years - Of Lewis the dauphin, and that lovely maid. - If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, - Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch? - If zealous love should go in search of virtue, - Where should he find it purer than in Blanch? - If love ambitious sought a match of birth, - Whose veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch? - Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, - Is the young dauphin every way complete: - If not complete of, say he is not she; - And she again wants nothing, to name want, - If want it be not, that she is not he. - He is the half part of a blessed man, - Left to be finished by such as she; - And she a fair divided excellence, - Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. - O, two such silver currents, when they join, - Do glorify the banks that bound them in: - And two such shores to two such streams made one, - Two such controuling bounds, shall you be, kings, - To these two princes, if you marry them.’ - -Another instance, which is certainly very happy as an example of the -simple enumeration of a number of particulars, is Salisbury’s -remonstrance against the second crowning of the king. - - ‘Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, - To guard a title that was rich before; - To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, - To throw a perfume on the violet, - To smooth the ice, to add another hue - Unto the rainbow, or with taper light - To seek the beauteous eye of heav’n to garnish; - Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.’ - - - TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL - -This is justly considered as one of the most delightful of Shakespear’s -comedies. It is full of sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps too -good-natured for comedy. It has little satire, and no spleen. It aims at -the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the -follies of mankind, not despise them, and still less bear any ill-will -towards them. Shakespear’s comic genius resembles the bee rather in its -power of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a -sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exaggeration of the -prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that they themselves, -instead of being offended at, would almost join in to humour; he rather -contrives opportunities for them to shew themselves off in the happiest -lights, than renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of -the wit or malice of others.—There is a certain stage of society in -which people become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, -affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they -are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object -of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals -on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast -between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and -denying to those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even the -merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and -satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, etc. To this -succeeds a state of society from which the same sort of affectation and -pretence are banished by a greater knowledge of the world or by their -successful exposure on the stage; and which by neutralising the -materials of comic character, both natural and artificial, leaves no -comedy at all—but _the sentimental_. Such is our modern comedy. There is -a period in the progress of manners anterior to both these, in which the -foibles and follies of individuals are of nature’s planting, not the -growth of art or study; in which they are therefore unconscious of them -themselves, or care not who knows them, if they can but have their whim -out; and in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators -rather receive pleasure from humouring the inclinations of the persons -they laugh at, than wish to give them pain by exposing their absurdity. -This may be called the comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which we -generally find in Shakespear.—Whether the analysis here given be just or -not, the spirit of his comedies is evidently quite distinct from that of -the authors above mentioned, as it is in its essence the same with that -of Cervantes, and also very frequently of Molière, though he was more -systematic in his extravagance than Shakespear. Shakespear’s comedy is -of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and -shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every -encouragement afforded it; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing -is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The -poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolises a quibble. His whole object is -to turn the meanest or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. The -relish which he has of a pun, or of the quaint humour of a low -character, does not interfere with the delight with which he describes a -beautiful image, or the most refined love. The clown’s forced jests do -not spoil the sweetness of the character of Viola; the same house is big -enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess, Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew -Ague-cheek. For instance, nothing can fall much lower than this last -character in intellect or morals: yet how are his weaknesses nursed and -dandled by Sir Toby into something ‘high fantastical,’ when on Sir -Andrew’s commendation of himself for dancing and fencing, Sir Toby -answers—‘Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a -curtain before them? Are they like to take dust like mistress Moll’s -picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in -a coranto? My very walk should be a jig! I would not so much as make -water but in a cinque-pace. What dost thou mean? Is this a world to hide -virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was -framed under the star of a galliard!’—How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the -Clown afterwards _chirp over their cups_, how they ‘rouse the night-owl -in a catch, able to draw three souls out of one weaver!’ What can be -better than Sir Toby’s unanswerable answer to Malvolio, ‘Dost thou -think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and -ale?’—In a word, the best turn is given to every thing, instead of the -worst. There is a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic, in -proportion as the characters are natural and sincere: whereas, in the -more artificial style of comedy, every thing gives way to ridicule and -indifference, there being nothing left but affectation on one side, and -incredulity on the other.—Much as we like Shakespear’s comedies, we -cannot agree with Dr. Johnson that they are better than his tragedies; -nor do we like them half so well. If his inclination to comedy sometimes -led him to trifle with the seriousness of tragedy, the poetical and -impassioned passages are the best parts of his comedies. The great and -secret charm of TWELFTH NIGHT is the character of Viola. Much as we like -catches and cakes and ale, there is something that we like better. We -have a friendship for Sir Toby; we patronise Sir Andrew; we have an -understanding with the Clown, a sneaking kindness for Maria and her -rogueries; we feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympathise with his -gravity, his smiles, his cross garters, his yellow stockings, and -imprisonment in the stocks. But there is something that excites in us a -stronger feeling than all this—it is Viola’s confession of her love. - - ‘_Duke._ What’s her history? - - _Viola._ _A blank, my lord, she never told her love_: - She let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud, - Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought, - And with a green and yellow melancholy, - She sat like Patience on a monument, - Smiling at grief. _Was not this love indeed?_ - We men may say more, swear more, but indeed, - Our shews are more than will; for still we prove - Much in our vows, but little in our love. - - _Duke._ But died thy sister of her love, my boy? - - _Viola._ I am all the daughters of my father’s house, - And all the brothers too;—and yet I know not.’— - -Shakespear alone could describe the effect of his own poetry. - - ‘Oh, it came o’er the ear like the sweet south - That breathes upon a bank of violets, - Stealing and giving odour.’ - -What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience on a monument, -which has been generally quoted, but the lines before and after it. -‘They give a very echo to the seat where love is throned.’ How long ago -it is since we first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they -vibrate on the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws from -the trembling strings of a harp left on some desert shore! There are -other passages of not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia’s -address to Sebastian, whom she supposes to have already deceived her in -a promise of marriage. - - ‘Blame not this haste of mine: if you mean well, - Now go with me and with this holy man - Into the chantry by: there before him, - And underneath that consecrated roof, - Plight me the full assurance of your faith, - _That my most jealous and too doubtful soul - May live at peace_.’ - -We have already said something of Shakespear’s songs. One of the most -beautiful of them occurs in this play, with a preface of his own to it. - - ‘_Duke._ O fellow, come, the song we had last night. - Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; - The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, - And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, - Do use to chaunt it: it is silly sooth, - And dallies with the innocence of love, - Like the old age. - - SONG. - - Come away, come away, death, - And in sad cypress let me be laid; - Fly away, fly away, breath; - I am slain by a fair cruel maid. - My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, - O prepare it; - My part of death no one so true - Did share it. - - Not a flower, not a flower sweet, - On my black coffin let there be strewn; - Not a friend, not a friend greet - My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: - A thousand thousand sighs to save, - Lay me, O! where - Sad true-love never find my grave, - To weep there.’ - -Who after this will say that Shakespear’s genius was only fitted for -comedy? Yet after reading other parts of this play, and particularly the -garden-scene where Malvolio picks up the letter, if we were to say that -his genius for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would -perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is more saturnine -than mercurial. - - ‘_Enter_ MARIA. - - _Sir Toby._ Here comes the little villain:—How now, my nettle of - India? - - _Maria._ Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio’s coming down - this walk: he has been yonder i’ the sun, practising behaviour to - his own shadow this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; - for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. - Close, in the name of jesting! Lie thou there; for here come’s the - trout that must be caught with tickling. - - [_They hide themselves. Maria throws down a letter, and Exit._ - - _Enter_ MALVOLIO. - - _Malvolio._ ’Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me, - she did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, - should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she - uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows - her. What should I think on’t? - - _Sir Toby._ Here’s an over-weening rogue! - - _Fabian._ O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; - how he jets under his advanced plumes! - - _Sir Andrew._ ‘Slight, I could so beat the rogue:— - - _Sir Toby._ Peace, I say. - - _Malvolio._ To be count Malvolio;— - - _Sir Toby._ Ah, rogue! - - _Sir Andrew._ Pistol him, pistol him. - - _Sir Toby._ Peace, peace! - - _Malvolio._ There is example for’t; the lady of the Strachy married - the yeoman of the wardrobe. - - _Sir Andrew._ Fie on him, Jezebel! - - _Fabian._ O, peace! now he’s deeply in; look, how imagination blows - him. - - _Malvolio._ Having been three months married to her, sitting in my - chair of state,—— - - _Sir Toby._ O for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye! - - _Malvolio._ Calling my officers about me, in my branch’d velvet - gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia sleeping. - - _Sir Toby._ Fire and brimstone! - - _Fabian._ O peace, peace! - - _Malvolio._ And then to have the humour of state: and after a demure - travel of regard,——telling them, I know my place, as I would they - should do theirs,—to ask for my kinsman Toby.—— - - _Sir Toby._ Bolts and shackles! - - _Fabian._ O, peace, peace, peace! now, now. - - _Malvolio._ Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for - him; I frown the while; and, perchance, wind up my watch, or play - with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me. - - _Sir Toby._ Shall this fellow live? - - _Fabian._ Though our silence be drawn from us with cares, yet peace. - - _Malvolio._ I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar - smile with an austere regard to controul. - - _Sir Toby._ And does not Toby take you a blow o’ the lips then? - - _Malvolio._ Saying—Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your - niece, give me this prerogative of speech;— - - _Sir Toby._ What, what? - - _Malvolio._ You must amend your drunkenness. - - _Fabian._ Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot. - - _Malvolio._ Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a - foolish knight— - - _Sir Andrew._ That’s me, I warrant you. - - _Malvolio._ One Sir Andrew—— - - _Sir Andrew._ I knew, ’twas I; for many do call me fool. - - _Malvolio._ What employment have we here? [_Taking up the letter._’ - -The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If poor Malvolio’s -treatment afterwards is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the -uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistaken attachment to -Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke’s passion is -atoned for by the discovery of Viola’s concealed love of him. - - - THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA - -This is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched -in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or -pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of -inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakespear’s, and -there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace and -felicity which marks it for his. One of the editors (we believe Mr. -Pope) remarks in a marginal note to the TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA— - - ‘It is observable (I know not for what cause) that the style of this - comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the - greater part of this author’s, though supposed to be one of the - first he wrote.’ - -Yet so little does the editor appear to have made up his mind upon this -subject, that we find the following note to the very next (the second) -scene. - - ‘This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I - believe were written by Shakespear, and others interpolated by the - players) is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be - accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in: - _Populo ut placerent_. I wish I had authority to leave them out, but - I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation upon them, - throughout this edition.’ - -It is strange that our fastidious critic should fall so soon from -praising to reprobating. The style of the familiar parts of this comedy -is indeed made up of conceits—low they may be for what we know, but then -they are not poor, but rich ones. The scene of Launce with his dog (not -that in the second, but that in the fourth act) is a perfect treat in -the way of farcical drollery and invention; nor do we think Speed’s -manner of proving his master to be in love deficient in wit or sense, -though the style may be criticised as not simple enough for the modern -taste. - - ‘_Valentine._ Why, how know you that I am in love? - - _Speed._ Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, - like Sir Protheus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent, to relish - a love-song like a robin-red-breast, to walk alone like one that had - the pestilence, to sigh like a school-boy that had lost his ABC, to - weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam, to fast like - one that takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing, to speak - puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, - to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; - when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked - sadly, it was for want of money; and now you are metamorphosed with - a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my - master.’ - -The tender scenes in this play, though not so highly wrought as in some -others, have often much sweetness of sentiment and expression. There is -something pretty and playful in the conversation of Julia with her maid, -when she shews such a disposition to coquetry about receiving the letter -from Protheus; and her behaviour afterwards and her disappointment, when -she finds him faithless to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imogen’s -tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against -following her lover in disguise, is a beautiful piece of poetry. - - ‘_Lucetta._ I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire, - But qualify the fire’s extremest rage, - Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason. - - _Julia._ The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns; - The current that with gentle murmur glides, - Thou know’st, being stopp’d, impatiently doth rage; - But when his fair course is not hindered, - He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones, - Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge - He overtaketh in his pilgrimage: - And so by many winding nooks he strays, - With willing sport, to the wild ocean.[70] - Then let me go, and hinder not my course; - I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream, - And make a pastime of each weary step, - Till the last step have brought me to my love; - And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil, - A blessed soul doth in Elysium.’ - -If Shakespear indeed had written only this and other passages in the TWO -GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, he would _almost_ have deserved Milton’s praise of -him— - - ‘And sweetest Shakespear, Fancy’s child, - Warbles his native wood-notes wild.’ - -But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than this. - - - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE - -This is a play that in spite of the change of manners and prejudices -still holds undisputed possession of the stage. Shakespear’s malignant -has outlived Mr. Cumberland’s benevolent Jew. In proportion as Shylock -has ceased to be a popular bugbear, ‘baited with the rabble’s curse,’ he -becomes a half-favourite with the philosophical part of the audience, -who are disposed to think that Jewish revenge is at least as good as -Christian injuries. Shylock is _a good hater_; ‘a man no less sinned -against than sinning.’ If he carries his revenge too far, yet he has -strong grounds for ‘the lodged hate he bears Anthonio,’ which he -explains with equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the -depositary of the vengeance of his race; and though the long habit of -brooding over daily insults and injuries has crusted over his temper -with inveterate misanthropy, and hardened him against the contempt of -mankind, this adds but little to the triumphant pretensions of his -enemies. There is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice mixed up -with the gall and bitterness of his resentment. The constant -apprehension of being burnt alive, plundered, banished, reviled, and -trampled on, might be supposed to sour the most forbearing nature, and -to take something from that ‘milk of human kindness,’ with which his -persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire of revenge is -almost inseparable from the sense of wrong; and we can hardly help -sympathising with the proud spirit, hid beneath his ‘Jewish gaberdine,’ -stung to madness by repeated undeserved provocations, and labouring to -throw off the load of obloquy and oppression heaped upon him and all his -tribe by one desperate act of ‘lawful’ revenge, till the ferociousness -of the means by which he is to execute his purpose, and the pertinacity -with which he adheres to it, turn us against him; but even at last, when -disappointed of the sanguinary revenge with which he had glutted his -hopes, and exposed to beggary and contempt by the letter of the law on -which he had insisted with so little remorse, we pity him, and think him -hardly dealt with by his judges. In all his answers and retorts upon his -adversaries, he has the best not only of the argument but of the -question, reasoning on their own principles and practice. They are so -far from allowing of any measure of equal dealing, of common justice or -humanity between themselves and the Jew, that even when they come to ask -a favour of him, and Shylock reminds them that ‘on such a day they spit -upon him, another spurned him, another called him dog, and for these -curtesies request he’ll lend them so much monies’—Anthonio, his old -enemy, instead of any acknowledgment of the shrewdness and justice of -his remonstrance, which would have been preposterous in a respectable -Catholic merchant in those times, threatens him with a repetition of the -same treatment— - - ‘I am as like to call thee so again, - To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.’ - -After this, the appeal to the Jew’s mercy, as if there were any common -principle of right and wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy, or -the blindest prejudice; and the Jew’s answer to one of Anthonio’s -friends, who asks him what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for, is -irresistible— - - To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my - revenge. He hath disgrac’d me, and hinder’d me of half a million, - laughed at my losses, mock’d at my gains, scorn’d my nation, - thwarted my bargains, cool’d my friends, heated mine enemies; and - what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew - hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with - the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same - diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same - winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not - bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we - not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like - you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a - Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a - Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why - revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go - hard but I will better the instruction.’ - -The whole of the trial-scene, both before and after the entrance of -Portia, is a master-piece of dramatic skill. The legal acuteness, the -passionate declamations, the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and -irony interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the -different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the -catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who is his own counsel, -defends himself well, and is triumphant on all the general topics that -are urged against him, and only fails through a legal flaw. Take the -following as an instance:— - - ‘_Shylock._ What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? - You have among you many a purchas’d slave, - Which like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, - You use in abject and in slavish part, - Because you bought them:—shall I say to you, - Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? - Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds - Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates - Be season’d with such viands? you will answer, - The slaves are ours:—so do I answer you: - The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, - Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it: - If you deny me, fie upon your law! - There is no force in the decrees of Venice: - I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?’ - -The keenness of his revenge awakes all his faculties; and he beats back -all opposition to his purpose, whether grave or gay, whether of wit or -argument, with an equal degree of earnestness and self-possession. His -character is displayed as distinctly in other less prominent parts of -the play, and we may collect from a few sentences the history of his -life—his descent and origin, his thrift and domestic economy, his -affection for his daughter, whom he loves next to his wealth, his -courtship and his first present to Leah, his wife! ‘I would not have -parted with it’ (the ring which he first gave her) ‘for a wilderness of -monkies!’ What a fine Hebraism is implied in this expression! - -Portia is not a very great favourite with us; neither are we in love -with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a certain degree of affectation and -pedantry about her, which is very unusual in Shakespear’s women, but -which perhaps was a proper qualification for the office of a ‘civil -doctor,’ which she undertakes and executes so successfully. The speech -about Mercy is very well; but there are a thousand finer ones in -Shakespear. We do not admire the scene of the caskets: and object -entirely to the Black Prince, Morocchius. We should like Jessica better -if she had not deceived and robbed her father, and Lorenzo, if he had -not married a Jewess, though he thinks he has a right to wrong a Jew. -The dialogue between this newly-married couple by moonlight, beginning -‘On such a night,’ etc. is a collection of classical elegancies. -Launcelot, the Jew’s man, is an honest fellow. The dilemma in which he -describes himself placed between his ‘conscience and the fiend,’ the one -of which advises him to run away from his master’s service and the other -to stay in it, is exquisitely humourous. - -Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate character. He is the jester of -the piece: yet one speech of his, in his own defence, contains a whole -volume of wisdom. - - ‘_Anthonio._ I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, - A stage, where every one must play his part; - And mine a sad one. - - _Gratiano._ Let me play the fool: - With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; - And let my liver rather heat with wine, - Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. - Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, - Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? - Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice - By being peevish? I tell thee what, Anthonio— - I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;— - There are a sort of men, whose visages - Do cream and mantle like a standing pond: - And do a wilful stillness entertain, - With purpose to be drest in an opinion - Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; - As who should say, _I am Sir Oracle, - And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark_! - O, my Anthonio, I do know of these, - That therefore only are reputed wise, - For saying nothing; who, I am very sure, - If they should speak, would almost damn those ears, - Which hearing them, would call their brothers, fools. - I’ll tell thee more of this another time: - But fish not with this melancholy bait, - For this fool’s gudgeon, this opinion,’ - -Gratiano’s speech on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit in -taking off the force of passion, is as full of spirit and good sense. -The graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, after the tragic -business is despatched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespear’s -knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not mean the pretended -quarrel between Portia and Nerissa and their husbands about the rings, -which is amusing enough, but the conversation just before and after the -return of Portia to her own house, beginning ‘How sweet the moonlight -sleeps upon this bank,’ and ending ‘Peace! how the moon sleeps with -Endymion, and would not be awaked.’ There is a number of beautiful -thoughts crowded into that short space, and linked together by the most -natural transitions. - -When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected to see, what -we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age and ugly with -mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the venom of his -heart congealed in the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose, -gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of his hatred, and -fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We were -disappointed, because we had taken our idea from other actors, not from -the play. There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single -line, ‘Bassanio and _old_ Shylock, both stand forth,’—which does not -imply that he is infirm with age—and the circumstance that he has a -daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old at all. It -would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and -deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with -prejudices and passion. That he has but one idea, is not true; he has -more ideas than any other person in the piece; and if he is intense and -inveterate in the pursuit of his purpose, he shews the utmost -elasticity, vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining it. -But so rooted was our habitual impression of the part from seeing it -caricatured in the representation, that it was only from a careful -perusal of the play itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in -general the best place to study our author’s characters in. It is too -often filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, -handed down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of _the great -vulgar and the small_.—‘’Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and gross -do merely gender in it!’ If a man of genius comes once in an age to -clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry, -‘’Tis a bad school: it may be like nature, it may be like Shakespear, -but it is not like us.’ Admirable critics! - - - THE WINTER’S TALE - -We wonder that Mr. Pope should have entertained doubts of the -genuineness of this play. He was, we suppose, shocked (as a certain -critic suggests) at the Chorus, Time, leaping over sixteen years with -his crutch between the third and fourth act, and at Antigonus’s landing -with the infant Perdita on the sea-coast of Bohemia. These slips or -blemishes however do not prove it not to be Shakespear’s; for he was as -likely to fall into them as any body; but we do not know any body but -himself who could produce the beauties. The _stuff_ of which the tragic -passion is composed, the romantic sweetness, the comic humour, are -evidently his. Even the crabbed and tortuous style of the speeches of -Leontes, reasoning on his own jealousy, beset with doubts and fears, and -entangled more and more in the thorny labyrinth, bears every mark of -Shakespear’s peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of -different thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance, and almost -strangled in the birth. For instance:— - - ‘Ha’ not you seen, Camillo? - (But that’s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass - Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn) or heard, - (For to a vision so apparent, rumour - Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation - Resides not within man that does not think) - My wife is slippery? If thou wilt, confess, - Or else be impudently negative, - To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought.’— - -Here Leontes is confounded with his passion, and does not know which way -to turn himself, to give words to the anguish, rage, and apprehension, -which tug at his breast. It is only as he is worked up into a clearer -conviction of his wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust -suspicions to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he -bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter indignation: yet -even here his passion staggers, and is as it were oppressed with its own -intensity. - - ‘Is whispering nothing? - Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? - Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career - Of laughter with a sigh? (a note infallible - Of breaking honesty!) horsing foot on foot? - Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? - Hours, minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes - Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only, - That would, unseen, be wicked? is this nothing? - Why then the world, and all that’s in’t, is nothing, - The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia’s nothing, - My wife is nothing!’ - -The character of Hermione is as much distinguished by its saintlike -resignation and patient forbearance, as that of Paulina is by her -zealous and spirited remonstrances against the injustice done to the -queen, and by her devoted attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione’s -restoration to her husband and her child, after her long separation from -them, is as affecting in itself as it is striking in the representation. -Camillo, and the old shepherd and his son, are subordinate but not -uninteresting instruments in the developement of the plot, and though -last, not least, comes Autolycus, a very pleasant, thriving rogue; and -(what is the best feather in the cap of all knavery) he escapes with -impunity in the end. - -THE WINTER’S TALE is one of the best-acting of our author’s plays. We -remember seeing it with great pleasure many years ago. It was on the -night that King took leave of the stage, when he and Mrs. Jordan played -together in the after-piece of the Wedding-day. Nothing could go off -with more _éclat_, with more spirit, and grandeur of effect. Mrs. -Siddons played Hermione, and in the last scene acted the painted statue -to the life—with true monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, -in Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical phrensy; and -Bannister, as Autolycus, roared as loud for pity as a sturdy beggar -could do who felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was sound of -wind and limb. We shall never see these parts so acted again; or if we -did, it would be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer surprise us by -their novelty. But true poetry, like nature, is always young; and we -still read the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, as we welcome the -return of spring, with the same feelings as ever. - - ‘_Florizel._ Thou dearest Perdita, - With these forc’d thoughts, I pr’ythee, darken not - The mirth o’ the feast: or, I’ll be thine, my fair, - Or not my father’s: for I cannot be - Mine own, nor any thing to any, if - I be not thine. To this I am most constant, - Tho’ destiny say, No. Be merry, gentle; - Strangle such thoughts as these, with any thing - That you behold the while. Your guests are coming: - Lift up your countenance; as it were the day - Of celebration of that nuptial, which - We two have sworn shall come. - - _Perdita._ O lady fortune, - Stand you auspicious! - - _Enter Shepherd, Clown_, MOPSA, DORCAS, _Servants; with_ POLIXENES, - _and_ CAMILLO, _disguised_. - - _Florizel._ See, your guests approach. - Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, - And let’s be red with mirth. - - _Shepherd._ Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv’d, upon - This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook; - Both dame and servant: welcom’d all, serv’d all: - Would sing her song, and dance her turn: now here - At upper end o’ the table, now i’ the middle: - On his shoulder, and his: her face o’ fire - With labour; and the thing she took to quench it - She would to each one sip. You are retir’d, - As if you were a feasted one, and not - The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid - These unknown friends to us welcome; for it is - A way to make us better friends, more known. - Come, quench your blushes; and present yourself - That which you are, mistress o’ the feast. Come on, - And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, - As your good flock shall prosper. - - _Perdita._ Sir, welcome! [_To Polixenes and Camillo._ - It is my father’s will I should take on me - The hostess-ship o’ the day: you’re welcome, sir! - - Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.—Reverend sirs, - For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep - Seeming, and savour, all the winter long: - Grace and remembrance be unto you both, - And welcome to our shearing! - - _Polixenes._ Shepherdess, - (A fair one are you) well you fit our ages - With flowers of winter. - - _Perdita._ Sir, the year growing ancient, - Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth - Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season - Are our carnations, and streak’d gilly-flowers, - Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind - Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not - To get slips of them. - - _Polixenes._ Wherefore, gentle maiden, - Do you neglect them? - - _Perdita._ For I have heard it said - There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares - With great creating nature. - - _Polixenes._ Say, there be: - Yet nature is made better by no mean, - But nature makes that mean: so, o’er that art - Which you say, adds to nature, is an art - That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry - A gentler scyon to the wildest stock; - And make conceive a bark of baser kind - By bud of nobler race. This is an art - Which does mend nature, change it rather: but - The art itself is nature. - - _Perdita._ So it is.[71] - - _Polixenes._ Then make your garden rich in gilly-flowers, - And do not call them bastards. - - _Perdita._ I’ll not put - The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them;[71] - No more than, were I painted, I would wish - This youth should say, ‘twere well; and only therefore - Desire to breed by me.—Here’s flowers for you; - Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram; - The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, - And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers - Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given - To men of middle age. You are very welcome. - - _Camillo._ I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, - And only live by gazing. - - _Perdita._ Out, alas! - You’d be so lean, that blasts of January - - Would blow you through and through. Now my fairest friends, - I would I had some flowers o’ the spring, that might - Become your time of day; and your’s, and your’s, - That wear upon your virgin branches yet - Your maiden-heads growing: O Proserpina, - For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let’st fall - From Dis’s waggon! daffodils, - That come before the swallow dares, and take - The winds of March with beauty: violets dim, - But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, - Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, - That die unmarried, ere they can behold - Bright Phœbus in his strength (a malady - Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and - The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds, - The fleur-de-lis being one! O, these I lack - To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend - To strow him o’er and o’er. - - _Florizel._ What, like a corse? - - _Perdita._ No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on; - Not like a corse; or if—not to be buried, - But quick, and in mine arms. Come take your flowers; - Methinks, I play as I have seen them do - In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine - Does change my disposition. - - _Florizel._ What you do, - Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, - I’d have you do it ever: when you sing, - I’d have you buy and sell so; so, give alms; - Pray, so; and for the ordering your affairs, - To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you - A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do - Nothing but that: move still, still so, - And own no other function. Each your doing, - So singular in each particular, - Crowns what you’re doing in the present deeds, - That all your acts are queens. - - _Perdita._ O Doricles, - Your praises are too large; but that your youth - And the true blood, which peeps forth fairly through it, - Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd; - With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, - You woo’d me the false way. - - _Florizel._ I think you have - As little skill to fear, as I have purpose - To put you to’t. But come, our dance, I pray: - Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair, - That never mean to part. - - _Perdita._ I’ll swear for ‘em. - - - _Polixenes._ This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever - Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does, or seems, - But smacks of something greater than herself, - Too noble for this place. - - _Camillo._ He tells her something - That makes her blood look out: good sooth she is - The queen of curds and cream.’ - -This delicious scene is interrupted by the father of the prince -discovering himself to Florizel, and haughtily breaking off the intended -match between his son and Perdita. When Polixenes goes out, Perdita -says, - - ‘Even here undone: - I was not much afraid; for once or twice - I was about to speak; and tell him plainly, - The self-same sun that shines upon his court, - Hides not his visage from our cottage, but - Looks on’t alike. Wilt please you, sir, be gone? [_To Florizel._ - I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, - Of your own state take care: this dream of mine, - Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther, - But milk my ewes and weep.’ - -As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out to be the daughter of -Hermione, and a princess in disguise, both feelings of the pride of -birth and the claims of nature are satisfied by the fortunate event of -the story, and the fine romance of poetry is reconciled to the strictest -court-etiquette. - - - ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL - -ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is one of the most pleasing of our author’s -comedies. The interest is however more of a serious than of a comic -nature. The character of Helen is one of great sweetness and delicacy. -She is placed in circumstances of the most critical kind, and has to -court her husband both as a virgin and a wife: yet the most scrupulous -nicety of female modesty is not once violated. There is not one thought -or action that ought to bring a blush into her cheeks, or that for a -moment lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the romantic attachment of a -beautiful and virtuous girl to one placed above her hopes by the -circumstances of birth and fortune, was never so exquisitely expressed -as in the reflections which she utters when young Roussillon leaves his -mother’s house, under whose protection she has been brought up with him, -to repair to the French king’s court. - - ‘_Helena._ Oh, were that all—I think not on my father, - And these great tears grace his remembrance more - Than those I shed for him. What was he like? - I have forgot him. My imagination - Carries no favour in it, but Bertram’s. - I am undone, there is no living, none - If Bertram be away. It were all one - That I should love a bright particular star, - And think to wed it; he is so above me: - In his bright radiance and collateral light - Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. - Th’ ambition in my love thus plagues itself; - The hind that would be mated by the lion, - Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, tho’ a plague, - To see him every hour, to sit and draw - His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls - In our heart’s table: heart too capable - Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. - But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy - Must sanctify his relics.’ - -The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a fond and innocent -heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution to follow him to France, -the success of her experiment in restoring the king’s health, her -demanding Bertram in marriage as a recompense, his leaving her in -disdain, her interview with him afterwards disguised as Diana, a young -lady whom he importunes with his secret addresses, and their final -reconciliation when the consequences of her stratagem and the proofs of -her love are fully made known. The persevering gratitude of the French -king to his benefactress, who cures him of a languishing distemper by a -prescription hereditary in her family, the indulgent kindness of the -Countess, whose pride of birth yields, almost without a struggle, to her -affection for Helen, the honesty and uprightness of the good old lord -Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful -stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably -described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and -cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram’s, the -detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very -amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, -‘The soul of this man is in his clothes’; and it is proved afterwards -that his heart is in his tongue, and that both are false and hollow. The -adventure of ‘the bringing off of his drum’ has become proverbial as a -satire on all ridiculous and blustering undertakings which the person -never means to perform: nor can any thing be more severe than what one -of the bye-standers remarks upon what Parolles says of himself, ‘Is it -possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?’ Yet Parolles -himself gives the best solution of the difficulty afterwards when he is -thankful to escape with his life and the loss of character; for, so that -he can live on, he is by no means squeamish about the loss of -pretensions, to which he had sense enough to know he had no real claim, -and which he had assumed only as a means to live. - - ‘_Parolles._ Yet I am thankful: if my heart were great, - ‘Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more, - But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft - As captain shall. Simply the thing I am - Shall make me live: who knows himself a braggart, - Let him fear this; for it shall come to pass, - That every braggart shall be found an ass. - Rust sword, cool blushes, and Parolles live - Safest in shame; being fool’d, by fool’ry thrive; - There’s place and means for every man alive. - I’ll after them.’ - -The story of ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of -Shakespear’s plays, is taken from Boccacio. The poet has dramatised the -original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all -the beauty of character and sentiment without _improving upon_ it, which -was impossible. There is indeed in Boccacio’s serious pieces a truth, a -pathos, and an exquisite refinement of sentiment, which is hardly to be -met with in any other prose writer whatever. Justice has not been done -him by the world. He has in general passed for a mere narrator of -lascivious tales or idle jests. This character probably originated in -his obnoxious attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the -grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on -Boccacio, and only saw in his writings what suited the coarseness of -their own tastes. But the truth is, that he has carried sentiment of -every kind to its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment we -would here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful -feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without -the violent excitement of opposing duties or untoward circumstances. In -this way, nothing ever came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi and -his Falcon. The perseverance in attachment, the spirit of gallantry and -generosity displayed in it, has no parallel in the history of heroical -sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious too, and involuntary, is -brought out in such small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious -circumstances, as to show it to have been woven into the very nature and -soul of the author. The story of Isabella is scarcely less fine, and is -more affecting in the circumstances and in the catastrophe. Dryden has -done justice to the impassioned eloquence of the Tancred and Sigismunda; -but has not given an adequate idea of the wild preternatural interest of -the story of Honoria. Cimon and Iphigene is by no means one of the best, -notwithstanding the popularity of the subject. The proof of unalterable -affection given in the story of Jeronymo, and the simple touches of -nature and picturesque beauty in the story of the two holiday lovers, -who were poisoned by tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are -perfect master-pieces. The epithet of Divine was well bestowed on this -great painter of the human heart. The invention implied in his different -tales is immense: but we are not to infer that it is all his own. He -probably availed himself of all the common traditions which were -floating in his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer -appears the most original of all authors—probably for no other reason -than that we can trace the plagiarism no farther. Boccacio has furnished -subjects to numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and -narrative. The story of Griselda is borrowed from his Decameron by -Chaucer; as is the Knight’s Tale (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of -the Theseid. - - - LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST - -If we were to part with any of the author’s comedies, it should be this. -Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty -potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel -the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after -dinner on ‘the golden cadences of poesy’; with Costard the clown, or -Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a character to be lost to -the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellow courtiers and -the king: and if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentlemen would -have no mistresses. So that we believe we may let the whole play stand -as it is, and we shall hardly venture to ‘set a mark of reprobation on -it.’ Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savours -more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespear’s time than of his own genius; -more of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of -the inspiration of the Muse. It transports us quite as much to the -manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes -of nature or the fairy-land of his own imagination. Shakespear has set -himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among -the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too -faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give -grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted -to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. -Shakespear has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon -into the mouth of the critical Holofernes ‘as too picked, too spruce, -too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it’; -and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose -from the trammels he had imposed on himself, ‘as light as bird from -brake,’ and speaks in his own person. We think, for instance, that in -the following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of Queen -Elizabeth and her maids of honour:— - - ‘_Biron._ O! and I forsooth in love, - I that have been love’s whip; - A very beadle to an amorous sigh: - A critic; nay, a night-watch constable, - A domineering pedant o’er the boy, - Than whom no mortal more magnificent. - This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, - This signior Junio, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, - Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, - Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans: - Liege of all loiterers and malecontents, - Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, - Sole imperator, and great general - Of trotting parators (O my little heart!) - And I to be a corporal of his field, - And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop? - What? I love! I sue! I seek a wife! - A woman, that is like a German clock, - Still a repairing; ever out of frame; - And never going aright, being a watch, - And being watch’d, that it may still go right? - Nay, to be perjur’d, which is worst of all: - And among three to love the worst of all, - A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, - With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; - Ay, and by heav’n, one that will do the deed, - Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard; - And I to sigh for her! to watch for her! - To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague - That Cupid will impose for my neglect - Of his almighty dreadful little might. - Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan: - Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.’ - -The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline and that which Biron gives of -Boyet are equally happy. The observations on the use and abuse of study, -and on the power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the -senses, are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect -is that in which Biron, the king, Longaville, and Dumain, successively -detect each other and are detected in their breach of their vow and in -their profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in which -they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one. The reconciliation -between these lovers and their sweethearts is also very good, and the -penance which Rosaline imposes on Biron, before he can expect to gain -her consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty. - - ‘_Rosaline._ Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, - Before I saw you: and the world’s large tongue - Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; - Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts; - Which you on all estates will execute, - That lie within the mercy of your wit. - To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain; - And therewithal to win me, if you please, - (Without the which I am not to be won) - You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day - Visit the speechless sick, and still converse - With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, - With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, - T’ enforce the pained impotent to smile. - - _Biron._ To move wild laughter in the throat of death? - It cannot be: it is impossible: - Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. - - _Rosaline._ Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit, - Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, - Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: - A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear - Of him that hears it; never in the tongue - Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, - Deaf’d with the clamours of their own dear groans, - Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, - And I will have you, and that fault withal; - But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, - And I shall find you empty of that fault, - Right joyful of your reformation. - - _Biron._ A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, - I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.’ - -The famous cuckoo-song closes the play: but we shall add no more -criticisms: ‘the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’ - - - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - -This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years. -Mr. Garrick’s Benedick was one of his most celebrated characters; and -Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The -serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances -that we have noticed. Hero is the principal figure in the piece, and -leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her -tenderness, and the hard trial of her love. The passage in which Claudio -first makes a confession of his affection towards her, conveys as -pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can -well be imagined. - - ‘Oh, my lord, - When you went onward with this ended action, - I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye, - That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand - Than to drive liking to the name of love; - But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughts - Have left their places vacant; in their rooms - Come thronging soft and delicate desires, - All prompting me how fair young Hero is, - Saying, I lik’d her ere I went to wars.’ - -In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don -John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were -divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own -conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting -simplicity. - - ‘_Claudio._ No, Leonato, - I never tempted her with word too large, - But, as a brother to his sister, shew’d - Bashful sincerity, and comely love. - - _Hero._ And seem’d I ever otherwise to you? - - _Claudio._ Out on thy seeming, I will write against it: - You seem to me as Dian in her orb, - As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; - But you are more intemperate in your blood - Than Venus, or those pamper’d animals - That rage in savage sensuality. - - _Hero._ Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide? - - _Leonato._ Are these things spoken, or do I but dream? - - _John._ Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. - - _Benedick._ This looks not like a nuptial. - - _Hero._ True! O God!’ - -The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the -confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those -temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespear seems to have -been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in -the following lines:— - - ‘_Friar._ She dying, as it must be so maintain’d, - Upon the instant that she was accus’d, - Shall be lamented, pity’d, and excus’d, - Of every hearer: for it so falls out, - That what we have we prize not to the worth, - While we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost, - Why then we rack the value; then we find - The virtue, that possession would not shew us - Whilst it was ours.—So will it fare with Claudio; - When he shall hear she dy’d upon his words, - The idea of her love shall sweetly creep - Into his study of imagination; - And every lovely organ of her life - Shall come apparel’d in more precious habit, - More moving, delicate, and full of life, - Into the eye and prospect of his soul, - Than when she liv’d indeed.’ - -The principal comic characters in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Benedick and -Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a -woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is -no less happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice’s love for -him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the -trick which is thus practised on Benedick, or that in which Beatrice is -prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid -declare (which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for her. -There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which -Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived -against herself— - - ‘For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs - Close by the ground, to hear our conference.’ - -In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which is true) she -exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone, - - ‘What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? - Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much? - Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride adieu! - No glory lives behind the back of such. - And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee; - Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand; - If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee - To bind our loves up in an holy band: - For others say thou dost deserve; and I - Believe it better than reportingly.’ - -And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with -equal reason, after he has heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his -friend, ‘Monsieur Love,’ discourse of the desperate state of his -supposed inamorata. - - ‘This can be no trick; the conference was sadly borne.—They have the - truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her - affections have the full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I - hear how I am censur’d: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I - perceive the love come from her; they say too, that she will rather - die than give any sign of affection.—I did never think to marry: I - must not seem proud:—happy are they that hear their detractions, and - can put them to mending. They say, the lady is fair; ’tis a truth, I - can bear them witness: and virtuous;—’tis so, I cannot reprove it: - and wise—but for loving me:—by my troth it is no addition to her - wit;—nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in - love with her.—I may chance to have some odd quirks and remnants of - wit broken on me, because I have rail’d so long against marriage: - but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth, - that he cannot endure in his age.—Shall quips, and sentences, and - these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his - humour? No: the world must be peopled. When I said, I would die a - bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were marry’d.—Here - comes Beatrice: by this day, she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks - of love in her. - -The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the persons so -entrapped. Benedick is a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and -gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to -Beatrice, she persecutes him all day with her jests (so that he could -hardly think of being troubled with them at night) she not only turns -him but all other things into jest, and is proof against everything -serious. - - ‘_Hero._ Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, - Misprising what they look on; and her wit - Values itself so highly, that to her - All matter else seems weak: she cannot love, - Nor take no shape nor project of affection, - She is so self-endeared. - - _Ursula._ Sure, I think so; - And therefore, certainly, it were not good - She knew his love, lest she make sport at it. - - _Hero._ Why, you speak truth: I never yet saw man, - How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d, - But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac’d, - She’d swear the gentleman should be her sister; - If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick, - Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; - If low, an agate very vilely cut: - If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; - If silent, why, a block moved with none. - So turns she every man the wrong side out; - And never gives to truth and virtue that - Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.’ - -These were happy materials for Shakespear to work on, and he has made a -happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more -nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our -follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, -retain nothing but their humanity. - -Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint -blundering and misprisions of meaning; and are a standing record of that -formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding, -which Shakespear no doubt copied from real life, and which in the course -of two hundred years appear to have ascended from the lowest to the -highest offices in the state. - - - AS YOU LIKE IT - -SHAKESPEAR has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia, -where they ‘fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.’ -It is the most ideal of any of this author’s plays. It is a pastoral -drama, in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and -characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is -done, but what is said, that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, -‘under the shade of melancholy boughs,’ the imagination grows soft and -delicate, and the wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child, that -is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here, and -stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of -humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure; the echo of the -cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those ‘who have -felt them knowingly,’ softened by time and distance. ‘They hear the -tumult, and are still.’ The very air of the place seems to breathe a -spirit of philosophical poetry: to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart -with pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was -there such beautiful moralising, equally free from pedantry or -petulance. - - ‘And this their life, exempt from public haunts, - Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, - Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.’ - -Jaques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespear. He -thinks, and does nothing. His whole occupation is to amuse his mind, and -he is totally regardless of his body and his fortunes. He is the prince -of philosophical idlers; his only passion is thought; he sets no value -upon any thing but as it serves as food for reflection. He can ‘suck -melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs’; the motley fool, ‘who -morals on the time,’ is the greatest prize he meets with in the forest. -He resents Orlando’s passion for Rosalind as some disparagement of his -own passion for abstract truth; and leaves the Duke, as soon as he is -restored to his sovereignty, to seek his brother out who has quitted it, -and turned hermit. - - —‘Out of these convertites - There is much matter to be heard and learnt.’ - -Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the forest of Arden, they -find leisure to be good and wise, or to play the fool and fall in love. -Rosalind’s character is made up of sportive gaiety and natural -tenderness: her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her -heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get deeper in love. The -coquetry with which she plays with her lover in the double character -which she has to support is managed with the nicest address. How full of -voluble, laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando— - - —‘In heedless mazes running - With wanton haste and giddy cunning.’ - -How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her answer to him -when he promises to love her ‘For ever and a day!’ - - ‘Say a day without the ever: no, no, Orlando, men are April when - they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, - but the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of - thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a - parrot against rain; more new-fangled than an ape; more giddy in my - desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing like Diana in the - fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I - will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep. - - _Orlando._ But will my Rosalind do so? - - _Rosalind._ By my life she will do as I do.’ - -The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to the -provoking loquacity of Rosalind, nor can anything be better conceived or -more beautifully described than the mutual affection between the two -cousins:— - - —‘We still have slept together, - Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together, - And wheresoe’r we went, like Juno’s swans, - Still we went coupled and inseparable.’ - -The unrequited love of Silvius for Phebe shews the perversity of this -passion in the commonest scenes of life, and the rubs and stops which -nature throws in its way, where fortune has placed none. Touchstone is -not in love, but he will have a mistress as a subject for the exercise -of his grotesque humour, and to shew his contempt for the passion, by -his indifference about the person. He is a rare fellow. He is a mixture -of the ancient cynic philosopher with the modern buffoon, and turns -folly into wit, and wit into folly, just as the fit takes him. His -courtship of Audrey not only throws a degree of ridicule on the state of -wedlock itself, but he is equally an enemy to the prejudices of opinion -in other respects. The lofty tone of enthusiasm, which the Duke and his -companions in exile spread over the stillness and solitude of a country -life, receives a pleasant shock from Touchstone’s sceptical -determination of the question. - - ‘_Corin._ And how like you this shepherd’s life, Mr. Touchstone? - - _Clown._ Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; - but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. In - respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect - that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in - the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the - court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my - humour; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against - my stomach.’ - -Zimmerman’s celebrated work on Solitude discovers only _half_ the sense -of this passage. - -There is hardly any of Shakespear’s plays that contains a greater number -of passages that have been quoted in books of extracts, or a greater -number of phrases that have become in a manner proverbial. If we were to -give all the striking passages, we should give half the play. We will -only recall a few of the most delightful to the reader’s recollection. -Such are the meeting between Orlando and Adam, the exquisite appeal of -Orlando to the humanity of the Duke and his company to supply him with -food for the old man, and their answer, the Duke’s description of a -country life, and the account of Jaques moralising on the wounded deer, -his meeting with Touchstone in the forest, his apology for his own -melancholy and his satirical vein, and the well-known speech on the -stages of human life, the old song of ‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind,’ -Rosalind’s description of the marks of a lover and of the progress of -time with different persons, the picture of the snake wreathed round -Oliver’s neck while the lioness watches her sleeping prey, and -Touchstone’s lecture to the shepherd, his defence of cuckolds, and -panegyric on the virtues of ‘an If.’—All of these are familiar to the -reader: there is one passage of equal delicacy and beauty which may have -escaped him, and with it we shall close our account of AS YOU LIKE IT. -It is Phebe’s description of Ganimed at the end of the third act. - - ‘Think not I love him, tho’ I ask for him; - ’Tis but a peevish boy, yet he talks well;— - But what care I for words! yet words do well, - When he that speaks them pleases those that hear: - It is a pretty youth; not very pretty; - But sure he’s proud, and yet his pride becomes him; - He’ll make a proper man; the best thing in him - Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue - Did make offence, his eye did heal it up: - He is not very tall, yet for his years he’s tall; - His leg is but so so, and yet ’tis well; - There was a pretty redness in his lip, - A little riper, and more lusty red - Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference - Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. - There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him - In parcels as I did, would have gone near - To fall in love with him: but for my part - I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet - I have more cause to hate him than to love him; - For what had he to do to chide at me?’ - - - THE TAMING OF THE SHREW - -THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is almost the only one of Shakespear’s comedies -that has a regular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bustle, -animation, and rapidity of action. It shews admirably how self-will is -only to be got the better of by stronger will, and how one degree of -ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by another still greater. -Petruchio is a madman in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly -speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his tricks and impostures. -He acts his assumed character to the life, with the most fantastical -extravagance, with complete presence of mind, with untired animal -spirits, and without a particle of ill humour from beginning to end.—The -situation of poor Katherine, worn out by his incessant persecutions, -becomes at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it is -difficult to say which to admire most, the unaccountableness of his -actions, or the unalterableness of his resolutions. It is a character -which most husbands ought to study, unless perhaps the very audacity of -Petruchio’s attempt might alarm them more than his success would -encourage them. What a sound must the following speech carry to some -married ears! - - ‘Think you a little din can daunt my ears? - Have I not in my time heard lions roar? - Have I not heard the sea, puff’d up with winds, - Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat? - Have I not heard great ordnance in the field? - And heav’n’s artillery thunder in the skies? - Have I not in a pitched battle heard - Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang? - And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue, - That gives not half so great a blow to hear, - As will a chesnut in a farmer’s fire?’ - -Not all Petruchio’s rhetoric would persuade more than ‘some dozen -followers’ to be of this heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his -scheme for the _Taming of the Shrew_, on a principle of contradiction, -thus:— - - ‘I’ll woo her with some spirit when she comes. - Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain - She sings as sweetly as a nightingale; - Say that she frown, I’ll say she looks as clear - As morning roses newly wash’d with dew; - Say she be mute, and will not speak a word, - Then I’ll commend her volubility, - And say she uttereth piercing eloquence: - If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks, - As though she bid me stay by her a week; - If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day, - When I shall ask the banns, and when be married?’ - -He accordingly gains her consent to the match, by telling her father -that he has got it; disappoints her by not returning at the time he has -promised to wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation -by the oddity of his dress and equipage. This, however, is nothing to -the astonishment excited by his mad-brained behaviour at the marriage. -Here is the account of it by an eye-witness:— - - ‘_Gremio._ Tut, she’s a lamb, a dove, a fool to him: - I’ll tell you, Sir Lucentio; when the priest - Should ask if Katherine should be his wife? - Ay, by gogs woons, quoth he; and swore so loud, - That, all amaz’d, the priest let fall the book; - And as he stooped again to take it up, - This mad-brain’d bridegroom took him such a cuff, - That down fell priest and book, and book and priest. - Now take them up, quoth he, if any list. - - _Tranio._ What said the wench when he rose up again? - - _Gremio._ Trembled and shook; for why, he stamp’d and swore, - As if the vicar meant to cozen him. - But after many ceremonies done, - He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if - He’ad been aboard carousing with his mates - After a storm; quaft off the muscadel, - And threw the sops all in the sexton’s face; - Having no other cause but that his beard - Grew thin and hungerly, and seem’d to ask - His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took - The bride about the neck, and kiss’d her lips - With such a clamourous smack, that at their parting - All the church echoed: and I seeing this, - Came thence for very shame; and after me, - I know, the rout is coming;— - Such a mad marriage never was before.’ - -The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the -character of Petruchio throughout, is the studied approximation to the -intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all -external considerations, and utter indifference to every thing but the -wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will. There is no contending -with a person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes, -and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want -common sense. With him a thing’s being plain and reasonable is a reason -against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as -sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at -home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. -Every thing flies before his will, like a conjuror’s wand, and he only -metamorphoses his wife’s temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the -objects she sees, at a word’s speaking. Such are his insisting that it -is the moon and not the sun which they see, etc. This extravagance -reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where, on -their return to her father’s, they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio -immediately addresses as a young lady:— - - ‘_Petruchio._ Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away? - Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, - Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? - Such war of white and red within her cheeks; - What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, - As those two eyes become that heav’nly face? - Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee: - Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty’s sake. - - _Hortensio._ He’ll make the man mad to make a woman of him. - - _Katherine._ Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, - Whither away, or where is thy abode? - Happy the parents of so fair a child; - Happier the man whom favourable stars - Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow. - - _Petruchio._ Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad: - This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither’d, - And not a maiden, as thou say’st he is. - - _Katherine._ Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes - That have been so bedazed with the sun - That everything I look on seemeth green. - Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.’ - -The whole is carried off with equal spirit, as if the poet’s comic Muse -had wings of fire. It is strange how one man could be so many things; -but so it is. The concluding scene, in which trial is made of the -obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio) is a -very happy one.—In some parts of this play there is a little too much -about music-masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of -greater rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing however can be -better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution -of his studies:— - - ‘The mathematics, and the metaphysics, - Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: - No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta’en: - In brief, sir, study what you most affect.’ - -We have heard the _Honey-Moon_ called ‘an elegant Katherine and -Petruchio.’ We suspect we do not understand this word _elegant_ in the -sense that many people do. But in our sense of the word, we should call -Lucentio’s description of his mistress elegant. - - ‘Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move, - And with her breath she did perfume the air: - Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.’ - -When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his encouragement, ‘I knew a -wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to -stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir’—there is nothing elegant in this, -and yet we hardly know which of the two passages is the best. - -THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is a play within a play. It is supposed to be a -play acted for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made to believe -himself a lord, when he wakes after a drunken brawl. The character of -Sly and the remarks with which he accompanies the play are as good as -the play itself. His answer when he is asked how he likes it, -‘Indifferent well; ’tis a good piece of work, would ‘twere done,’ is in -good keeping, as if he were thinking of his Saturday night’s job. Sly -does not change his tastes with his new situation, but in the midst of -splendour and luxury still calls out lustily and repeatedly ‘for a pot -o’ the smallest ale.’ He is very slow in giving up his personal identity -in his sudden advancement.—‘I am Christophero Sly, call not me honour -nor lordship. I ne’er drank sack in my life: and if you give me any -conserves, give me conserves of beef: ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll -wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than -legs, nor no more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, -or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.—What, would you -make me mad? Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton-heath, -by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a -bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, -the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not -fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st -knave in Christendom.’ - -This is honest. ‘The Slies are no rogues,’ as he says of himself. We -have a great predilection for this representative of the family; and -what makes us like him the better is, that we take him to be of kin (not -many degrees removed) to Sancho Panza. - - - MEASURE FOR MEASURE - -This is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom. Yet there is an -original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking -a cordial interest in it. ‘The height of moral argument’ which the -author has maintained in the intervals of passion or blended with the -more powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpassed in any of his -plays. But there is in general a want of passion; the affections are at -a stand; our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions. The -only passion which influences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he -seems to have a much greater passion for hypocrisy than for his -mistress. Neither are we greatly enamoured of Isabella’s rigid chastity, -though she could not act otherwise than she did. We do not feel the same -confidence in the virtue that is ‘sublimely good’ at another’s expense, -as if it had been put to some less disinterested trial. As to the Duke, -who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage-character, he is more -absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of -the state; more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the -feelings and apprehensions of others. Claudio is the only person who -feels naturally; and yet he is placed in circumstances of distress which -almost preclude the wish for his deliverance. Mariana is also in love -with Angelo, whom we hate. In this respect, there may be said to be a -general system of cross-purposes between the feelings of the different -characters and the sympathy of the reader or the audience. This -principle of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the -character of Master Barnardine, who not only sets at defiance the -opinions of others, but has even thrown off all self-regard,—‘one that -apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, -reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, and to come.’ He is a -fine antithesis to the morality and the hypocrisy of the other -characters of the play. Barnardine is Caliban transported from -Prospero’s wizard island to the forests of Bohemia or the prisons of -Vienna. He is the creature of bad habits as Caliban is of gross -instincts. He has however a strong notion of the natural fitness of -things, according to his own sensations—‘He has been drinking hard all -night, and he will not be hanged that day’—and Shakespear has let him -off at last. We do not understand why the philosophical German critic, -Schlegel, should be so severe on those pleasant persons, Lucio, Pompey, -and Master Froth, as to call them ‘wretches.’ They appear all mighty -comfortable in their occupations, and determined to pursue them, ‘as the -flesh and fortune should serve.’ A very good exposure of the want of -self-knowledge and contempt for others, which is so common in the world, -is put into the mouth of Abhorson, the jailor, when the Provost proposes -to associate Pompey with him in his office—‘A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, -he will discredit our mystery.’ And the same answer will serve in nine -instances out of ten to the same kind of remark, ‘Go to, sir, you weigh -equally; a feather will turn the scale.’ Shakespear was in one sense the -least moral of all writers; for morality (commonly so called) is made up -of antipathies; and his talent consisted in sympathy with human nature, -in all its shapes, degrees, depressions, and elevations. The object of -the pedantic moralist is to find out the bad in everything: his was to -shew that ‘there is some soul of goodness in things evil.’ Even Master -Barnardine is not left to the mercy of what others think of him; but -when he comes in, speaks for himself, and pleads his own cause, as well -as if counsel had been assigned him. In one sense, Shakespear was no -moralist at all: in another, he was the greatest of all moralists. He -was a moralist in the same sense in which nature is one. He taught what -he had learnt from her. He shewed the greatest knowledge of humanity -with the greatest fellow-feeling for it. - -One of the most dramatic passages in the present play is the interview -between Claudio and his sister, when she comes to inform him of the -conditions on which Angelo will spare his life. - - ‘_Claudio._ Let me know the point. - - _Isabella._ O, I do fear thee, Claudio: and I quake, - Lest thou a feverous life should’st entertain, - And six or seven winters more respect - Than a perpetual honour. Dar’st thou die? - The sense of death is most in apprehension; - And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, - In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great - As when a giant dies. - - _Claudio._ Why give you me this shame? - Think you I can a resolution fetch - From flowery tenderness; if I must die, - I will encounter darkness as a bride, - And hug it in mine arms. - - _Isabella._ There spake my brother! there my father’s grave - Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die: - Thou art too noble to conserve a life - In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy— - Whose settled visage and deliberate word - Nips youth i’ the head, and follies doth emmew, - As faulcon doth the fowl—is yet a devil. - - _Claudio._ The princely Angelo? - - _Isabella._ Oh, ’tis the cunning livery of hell, - The damned’st body to invest and cover - In princely guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, - If I would yield him my virginity, - Thou might’st be freed? - - _Claudio._ Oh, heavens! it cannot be. - - _Isabella._ Yes, he would give it thee, for this rank offence, - So to offend him still: this night’s the time - That I should do what I abhor to name, - Or else thou dy’st to-morrow. - - _Claudio._ Thou shalt not do’t. - - _Isabella._ Oh, were it but my life, - I’d throw it down for your deliverance - As frankly as a pin. - - _Claudio._ Thanks, dear Isabel. - - _Isabella._ Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow. - - _Claudio._ Yes.—Has he affections in him, - That thus can make him bite the law by the nose? - When he would force it, sure it is no sin; - Or of the deadly seven it is the least. - - _Isabella._ Which is the least? - - _Claudio._ If it were damnable, he, being so wise, - Why would he for the momentary trick - Be perdurably fin’d? Oh, Isabel! - - _Isabella._ What says my brother? - - _Claudio._ Death is a fearful thing. - - _Isabella._ And shamed life a hateful. - - _Claudio._ Aye, but to die, and go we know not where; - To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; - This sensible warm motion to become - A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit - To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside - In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; - To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, - And blown with restless violence round about - The pendant world; or to be worse than worst - Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts - Imagine howling!—’tis too horrible! - The weariest and most loathed worldly life, - That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment - Can lay on nature, is a paradise - To what we fear of death. - - _Isabella._ Alas! alas! - - _Claudio._ Sweet sister, let me live: - What sin you do to save a brother’s life, - Nature dispenses with the deed so far, - That it becomes a virtue.’ - -What adds to the dramatic beauty of this scene and the effect of -Claudio’s passionate attachment to life is, that it immediately follows -the Duke’s lecture to him, in the character of the Friar, recommending -an absolute indifference to it. - - —‘Reason thus with life,— - If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing, - That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, - Servile to all the skyey influences - That do this habitation, where thou keep’st, - Hourly afflict; merely, thou art death’s fool; - For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, - And yet run’st toward him still: thou art not noble; - For all the accommodations, that thou bear’st, - Are nurs’d by baseness: thou art by no means valiant; - For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork - Of a poor worm: thy best of rest is sleep, - And that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st - Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; - For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains - That issue out of dust: happy thou art not; - For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get; - And what thou hast, forget’st: thou art not certain; - For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, - After the moon: if thou art rich, thou art poor; - For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows - Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, - And death unloads thee: friend thou hast none; - For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire, - The mere effusion of thy proper loins, - Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, - For ending thee no sooner; thou hast nor youth, nor age; - But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, - Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth - Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms - Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich, - Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, - To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this, - That bears the name of life? Yet in this life - Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear, - That makes these odds all even.’ - - - THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR - -THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR is no doubt a very amusing play, with a great -deal of humour, character, and nature in it: but we should have liked it -much better, if any one else had been the hero of it, instead of -Falstaff. We could have been contented if Shakespear had not been -‘commanded to shew the knight in love.’ Wits and philosophers, for the -most part, do not shine in that character; and Sir John himself, by no -means, comes off with flying colours. Many people complain of the -degradation and insults to which Don Quixote is so frequently exposed in -his various adventures. But what are the unconscious indignities which -he suffers, compared with the sensible mortifications which Falstaff is -made to bring upon himself? What are the blows and buffetings which the -Don receives from the staves of the Yanguesian carriers or from Sancho -Panza’s more hard-hearted hands, compared with the contamination of the -buck-basket, the disguise of the fat woman of Brentford, and the horns -of Herne the hunter, which are discovered on Sir John’s head? In reading -the play, we indeed wish him well through all these discomfitures, but -it would have been as well if he had not got into them. Falstaff in the -MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR is not the man he was in the two parts of _Henry -IV._ His wit and eloquence have left him. Instead of making a butt of -others, he is made a butt of by them. Neither is there a single particle -of love in him to excuse his follies: he is merely a designing, -bare-faced knave, and an unsuccessful one. The scene with Ford as Master -Brook, and that with Simple, Slender’s man, who comes to ask after the -Wise Woman, are almost the only ones in which his old intellectual -ascendancy appears. He is like a person recalled to the stage to perform -an unaccustomed and ungracious part; and in which we perceive only ‘some -faint sparks of those flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the -hearers in a roar.’ But the single scene with Doll Tearsheet, or Mrs. -Quickly’s account of his desiring ‘to eat some of housewife Reach’s -prawns,’ and telling her ‘to be no more so familiarity with such -people,’ is worth the whole of the MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR put together. -Ford’s jealousy, which is the main spring of the comic incidents, is -certainly very well managed. Page, on the contrary, appears to be -somewhat uxorious in his disposition; and we have pretty plain -indications of the effect of the characters of the husbands on the -different degrees of fidelity in their wives. Mrs. Quickly makes a very -lively go-between, both between Falstaff and his Dulcineas, and Anne -Page and her lovers, and seems in the latter case so intent on her own -interest as totally to overlook the intentions of her employers. Her -master, Dr. Caius, the Frenchman, and her fellow-servant Jack Rugby, are -very completely described. This last-mentioned person is rather quaintly -commended by Mrs. Quickly as ‘an honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever -servant shall come in house withal, and I warrant you, no tell-tale, nor -no breed-bate; his worst fault is, that he is given to prayer; he is -something peevish that way; but nobody but has his fault.’ The Welch -Parson, Sir Hugh Evans (a title which in those days was given to the -clergy) is an excellent character in all respects. He is as respectable -as he is laughable. He has ‘very good discretions, and very odd -humours.’ The duel-scene with Caius gives him an opportunity to shew his -‘cholers and his tremblings of mind,’ his valour and his melancholy, in -an irresistible manner. In the dialogue, which at his mother’s request -he holds with his pupil, William Page, to shew his progress in learning, -it is hard to say whether the simplicity of the master or the scholar is -the greatest. Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, are but the shadows of what -they were; and Justice Shallow himself has little of his consequence -left. But his cousin, Slender, makes up for the deficiency. He is a very -potent piece of imbecility. In him the pretensions of the worthy -Gloucestershire family are well kept up, and immortalised. He and his -friend Sackerson and his book of songs and his love of Anne Page and his -having nothing to say to her can never be forgotten. It is the only -first-rate character in the play: but it is in that class. Shakespear is -the only writer who was as great in describing weakness as strength. - - - THE COMEDY OF ERRORS - -This comedy is taken very much from the Menæchmi of Plautus, and is not -an improvement on it. Shakespear appears to have bestowed no great pains -on it, and there are but a few passages which bear the decided stamp of -his genius. He seems to have relied on his author, and on the interest -arising out of the intricacy of the plot. The curiosity excited is -certainly very considerable, though not of the most pleasing kind. We -are teazed as with a riddle, which notwithstanding we try to solve. In -reading the play, from the sameness of the names of the two Antipholises -and the two Dromios, as well from their being constantly taken for each -other by those who see them, it is difficult, without a painful effort -of attention, to keep the characters distinct in the mind. And again, on -the stage, either the complete similarity of their persons and dress -must produce the same perplexity whenever they first enter, or the -identity of appearance which the story supposes, will be destroyed. We -still, however, having a clue to the difficulty, can tell which is -which, merely from the practical contradictions which arise, as soon as -the different parties begin to speak; and we are indemnified for the -perplexity and blunders into which we are thrown by seeing others thrown -into greater and almost inextricable ones.—This play (among other -considerations) leads us not to feel much regret that Shakespear was not -what is called a classical scholar. We do not think his _forte_ would -ever have lain in imitating or improving on what others invented, so -much as in inventing for himself, and perfecting what he invented,—not -perhaps by the omission of faults, but by the addition of the highest -excellencies. His own genius was strong enough to bear him up, and he -soared longest and best on unborrowed plumes.—The only passage of a very -Shakespearian cast in this comedy is the one in which the Abbess, with -admirable characteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her own -misconduct in driving her husband mad. - - ‘_Abbess._ How long hath this possession held the man? - - _Adriana._ This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad, - And much, much different from the man he was; - But, till this afternoon, his passion - Ne’er brake into extremity of rage. - - _Abbess._ Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck at sea? - Bury’d some dear friend? Hath not else his eye - Stray’d his affection in unlawful love? - A sin prevailing much in youthful men, - Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing. - Which of these sorrows is he subject to? - - _Adriana._ To none of these, except it be the last: - Namely, some love, that drew him oft from home. - - _Abbess._ You should for that have reprehended him. - - _Adriana._ Why, so I did. - - _Abbess._ But not rough enough. - - _Adriana._ As roughly as my modesty would let me. - - _Abbess._ Haply, in private. - - _Adriana._ And in assemblies too. - - _Abbess._ Aye, but not enough. - - _Adriana._ It was the copy of our conference: - In bed, he slept not for my urging it; - At board, he fed not for my urging it; - Alone it was the subject of my theme; - In company, I often glanc’d at it; - Still did I tell him it was vile and bad. - - _Abbess._ And therefore came it that the man was mad: - The venom’d clamours of a jealous woman - Poison more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth. - It seems, his sleeps were hinder’d by thy railing: - And therefore comes it that his head is light. - Thou say’st his meat was sauc’d with thy upbraidings: - Unquiet meals make ill digestions, - Therefore the raging fire of fever bred: - And what’s a fever but a fit of madness? - Thou say’st his sports were hinder’d by thy brawls: - Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue, - But moody and dull melancholy, - Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair; - And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop - Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life? - In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest - To be disturb’d, would mad or man or beast: - The consequence is then, thy jealous fits - Have scar’d thy husband from the use of wits. - - _Luciana._ She never reprehended him but mildly, - When he demeaned himself rough, rude, and wildly.— - Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not? - - _Adriana._ She did betray me to my own reproof.’ - -Pinch the conjuror is also an excrescence not to be found in Plautus. He -is indeed a very formidable anachronism. - - ‘They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain, - A meer anatomy, a mountebank, - A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller; - A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch, - A living dead man.’ - -This is exactly like some of the Puritanical portraits to be met with in -Hogarth. - - - DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR - -We shall give for the satisfaction of the reader what the celebrated -German critic, Schlegel, says on this subject, and then add a very few -remarks of our own. - - ‘All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are unanimous in - rejecting _Titus Andronicus_ as unworthy of Shakespear, though they - always allow it to be printed with the other pieces, as the - scape-goat, as it were, of their abusive criticism. The correct - method in such an investigation is first to examine into the - external grounds, evidences, etc. and to weigh their worth; and then - to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work. - The critics of Shakespear follow a course directly the reverse of - this; they set out with a preconceived opinion against a piece, and - seek, in justification of this opinion, to render the historical - grounds suspicious, and to set them aside. _Titus Andronicus_ is to - be found in the first folio edition of Shakespear’s works, which it - was known was conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many years his - friends and fellow-managers of the same theatre. Is it possible to - persuade ourselves that they would not have known if a piece in - their repertory did or did not actually belong to Shakespear? And - are we to lay to the charge of these honourable men a designed fraud - in this single case, when we know that they did not shew themselves - so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by the - name of Shakespear, but, as it appears, merely gave those plays of - which they had manuscripts in hand? Yet the following circumstance - is still stronger: George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of - Shakespear, mentions _Titus Andronicus_ in an enumeration of his - works, in the year 1598. Meres was personally acquainted with the - poet, and so very intimately, that the latter read over to him his - Sonnets before they were printed. I cannot conceive that all the - critical scepticism in the world would be sufficient to get over - such a testimony. - - ‘This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false idea of - the tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities - degenerates into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression - behind: the story of Tereus and Philomela is heightened and - overcharged under other names, and mixed up with the repast of - Atreus and Thyestes, and many other incidents. In detail there is no - want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay, even features which - betray the peculiar conception of Shakespear. Among these we may - reckon the joy of the treacherous Moor at the blackness and ugliness - of his child begot in adultery; and in the compassion of Titus - Andronicus, grown childish through grief, for a fly which had been - struck dead, and his rage afterwards when he imagines he discovers - in it his black enemy, we recognize the future poet of _Lear_. Are - the critics afraid that Shakespear’s fame would be injured, were it - established that in his early youth he ushered into the world a - feeble and immature work? Was Rome the less the conqueror of the - world because Remus could leap over its first walls? Let any one - place himself in Shakespear’s situation at the commencement of his - career. He found only a few indifferent models, and yet these met - with the most favourable reception, because men are never difficult - to please in the novelty of an art before their taste has become - fastidious from choice and abundance. Must not this situation have - had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on - himself, and, by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the - richest veins of a noble metal? It is even highly probable that he - must have made several failures before getting into the right path. - Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to learn; - but art is to be learned, and must be acquired by practice and - experience. In Shakespear’s acknowledged works we find hardly any - traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship he certainly - had. This every artist must have, and especially in a period where - he has not before him the example of a school already formed. I - consider it as extremely probable, that Shakespear began to write - for the theatre at a much earlier period than the one which is - generally stated, namely, not till after the year 1590. It appears - that, as early as the year 1584, when only twenty years of age, he - had left his paternal home and repaired to London. Can we imagine - that such an active head would remain idle for six whole years - without making any attempt to emerge by his talents from an - uncongenial situation? That in the dedication of the poem of Venus - and Adonis he calls it, ‘the first heir of his invention,’ proves - nothing against the supposition. It was the first which he printed; - he might have composed it at an earlier period; perhaps, also, he - did not include theatrical labours, as they then possessed but - little literary dignity. The earlier Shakespear began to compose for - the theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the immaturity and - imperfection of a work as a proof of its spuriousness in opposition - to historical evidence, if we only find in it prominent features of - his mind. Several of the works rejected as spurious, may still have - been produced in the period betwixt _Titus Andronicus_, and the - earliest of the acknowledged pieces. - - ‘At last, Steevens published seven pieces ascribed to Shakespear in - two supplementary volumes. It is to be remarked, that they all - appeared in print in Shakespear’s life-time, with his name prefixed - at full length. They are the following:— - - ‘1. _Locrine._ The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not - altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, - are entitled to attention. However, this question is immediately - connected with that respecting _Titus Andronicus_, and must be at - the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative. - - ‘2. _Pericles, Prince of Tyre._ This piece was acknowledged by - Dryden, but as a youthful work of Shakespear. It is most undoubtedly - his, and it has been admitted into several of the late editions. The - supposed imperfections originate in the circumstance, that - Shakespear here handled a childish and extravagant romance of the - old poet Gower, and was unwilling to drag the subject out of its - proper sphere. Hence he even introduces Gower himself, and makes him - deliver a prologue entirely in his antiquated language and - versification. This power of assuming so foreign a manner is at - least no proof of helplessness. - - ‘3. _The London Prodigal._ If we are not mistaken, Lessing - pronounced this piece to be Shakespear’s, and wished to bring it on - the German stage. - - ‘4. _The Puritan; or, the Widows of Watling Street._ One of my - literary friends, intimately acquainted with Shakespear, was of - opinion that the poet must have wished to write a play for once in - the style of Ben Jonson, and that in this way we must account for - the difference between the present piece and his usual manner. To - follow out this idea however would lead to a very nice critical - investigation. - - ‘5. _Thomas, Lord Cromwell._ - - ‘6. _Sir John Oldcastle—First Part._ - - ‘7. _A Yorkshire Tragedy._ - - ‘The three last pieces are not only unquestionably Shakespear’s, but - in my opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest - works.—Steevens admits at last, in some degree, that they are - Shakespear’s, as well as the others, excepting _Locrine_, but he - speaks of all of them with great contempt, as quite worthless - productions. This condemnatory sentence is not however in the - slightest degree convincing, nor is it supported by critical acumen. - I should like to see how such a critic would, of his own natural - suggestion, have decided on Shakespear’s acknowledged master-pieces, - and what he would have thought of praising in them, had the public - opinion not imposed on him the duty of admiration. _Thomas, Lord - Cromwell_, and _Sir John Oldcastle_, are biographical dramas, and - models in this species: the first is linked, from its subject, to - _Henry the Eighth_, and the second to _Henry the Fifth_. The second - part of _Oldcastle_ is wanting; I know not whether a copy of the old - edition has been discovered in England, or whether it is lost. _The - Yorkshire Tragedy_ is a tragedy in one act, a dramatised tale of - murder: the tragical effect is overpowering, and it is extremely - important to see how poetically Shakespear could handle such a - subject. - - ‘There have been still farther ascribed to him:—1st. _The Merry - Devil of Edmonton_, a comedy in one act, printed in Dodsley’s old - plays. This has certainly some appearances in its favour. It - contains a merry landlord, who bears a great similarity to the one - in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_. However, at all events, though an - ingenious, it is but a hasty sketch. 2d. _The Accusation of Paris._ - 3d. _The Birth of Merlin._ 4th. _Edward the Third._ 5th. _The Fair - Emma._ 6th. _Mucedorus._ 7th. _Arden of Feversham._ I have never - seen any of these, and cannot therefore say anything respecting - them. From the passages cited, I am led to conjecture that the - subject of _Mucedorus_ is the popular story of Valentine and Orson; - a beautiful subject which Lope de Vega has also taken for a play. - _Arden of Feversham_ is said to be a tragedy on the story of a man, - from whom the poet was descended by the mother’s side. If the - quality of the piece is not too directly at variance with this - claim, the circumstance would afford an additional probability in - its favour. For such motives were not foreign to Shakespear: he - treated Henry the Seventh, who bestowed lands on his forefathers for - services performed by them, with a visible partiality. - - ‘Whoever takes from Shakespear a play early ascribed to him, and - confessedly belonging to his time, is unquestionably bound to - answer, with some degree of probability, this question: who has then - written it? Shakespear’s competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty - well known, and if those of them who have even acquired a - considerable name, a Lilly, a Marlow, a Heywood, are still so very - far below him, we can hardly imagine that the author of a work, - which rises so high beyond theirs, would have remained - unknown.’—_Lectures on Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii. page 252. - -We agree to the truth of this last observation, but not to the justice -of its application to some of the plays here mentioned. It is true that -Shakespear’s best works are very superior to those of Marlow, or -Heywood, but it is not true that the best of the doubtful plays above -enumerated are superior or even equal to the best of theirs. _The -Yorkshire Tragedy_, which Schlegel speaks of as an undoubted production -of our author’s, is much more in the manner of Heywood than of -Shakespear. The effect is indeed overpowering, but the mode of producing -it is by no means poetical. The praise which Schlegel gives to _Thomas, -Lord Cromwell_, and to _Sir John Oldcastle_, is altogether exaggerated. -They are very indifferent compositions, which have not the slightest -pretensions to rank with _Henry V._ or _Henry VIII._ We suspect that the -German critic was not very well acquainted with the dramatic -contemporaries of Shakespear, or aware of their general merits; and that -he accordingly mistakes a resemblance in style and manner for an equal -degree of excellence. Shakespear differed from the other writers of his -age not in the mode of treating his subjects, but in the grace and power -which he displayed in them. The reason assigned by a literary friend of -Schlegel’s for supposing _The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watling Street_, -to be Shakespear’s, viz. that it is in the style of Ben Jonson, that is -to say, in a style just the reverse of his own, is not very satisfactory -to a plain English understanding. _Locrine_, and _The London Prodigal_, -if they were Shakespear’s at all, must have been among the sins of his -youth. _Arden of Feversham_ contains several striking passages, but the -passion which they express is rather that of a sanguine temperament than -of a lofty imagination; and in this respect they approximate more nearly -to the style of other writers of the time than to Shakespear’s. _Titus -Andronicus_ is certainly as unlike Shakespear’s usual style as it is -possible. It is an accumulation of vulgar physical horrors, in which the -power exercised by the poet bears no proportion to the repugnance -excited by the subject. The character of Aaron the Moor is the only -thing which shews any originality of conception; and the scene in which -he expresses his joy ‘at the blackness and ugliness of his child begot -in adultery,’ the only one worthy of Shakespear. Even this is worthy of -him only in the display of power, for it gives no pleasure. Shakespear -managed these things differently. Nor do we think it a sufficient answer -to say that this was an embryo or crude production of the author. In its -kind it is full grown, and its features decided and overcharged. It is -not like a first imperfect essay, but shews a confirmed habit, a -systematic preference of violent effect to everything else. There are -occasional detached images of great beauty and delicacy, but these were -not beyond the powers of other writers then living. The circumstance -which inclines us to reject the external evidence in favour of this play -being Shakespear’s is, that the grammatical construction is constantly -false and mixed up with vulgar abbreviations, a fault that never occurs -in any of his genuine plays. A similar defect, and the halting measure -of the verse are the chief objections to _Pericles of Tyre_, if we -except the far-fetched and complicated absurdity of the story. The -movement of the thoughts and passions has something in it not unlike -Shakespear, and several of the descriptions are either the original -hints of passages which Shakespear has ingrafted on his other plays, or -are imitations of them by some contemporary poet. The most memorable -idea in it is in Marina’s speech, where she compares the world to ‘a -lasting storm, hurrying her from her friends.’ - - - POEMS AND SONNETS - -Our idolatry of Shakespear (not to say our admiration) ceases with his -plays. In his other productions, he was a mere author, though not a -common author. It was only by representing others, that he became -himself. He could go out of himself, and express the soul of Cleopatra; -but in his own person, he appeared to be always waiting for the -prompter’s cue. In expressing the thoughts of others, he seemed -inspired; in expressing his own, he was a mechanic. The licence of an -assumed character was necessary to restore his genius to the privileges -of nature, and to give him courage to break through the tyranny of -fashion, the trammels of custom. In his plays, he was ‘as broad and -casing as the general air’: in his poems, on the contrary, he appears to -be ‘cooped, and cabined in’ by all the technicalities of art, by all the -petty intricacies of thought and language, which poetry had learned from -the controversial jargon of the schools, where words had been made a -substitute for things. There was, if we mistake not, something of -modesty, and a painful sense of personal propriety at the bottom of -this. Shakespear’s imagination, by identifying itself with the strongest -characters in the most trying circumstances, grappled at once with -nature, and trampled the littleness of art under his feet: the rapid -changes of situation, the wide range of the universe, gave him life and -spirit, and afforded full scope to his genius; but returned into his -closet again, and having assumed the badge of his profession, he could -only labour in his vocation, and conform himself to existing models. The -thoughts, the passions, the words which the poet’s pen, ‘glancing from -heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,’ lent to others, shook off the -fetters of pedantry and affectation; while his own thoughts and -feelings, standing by themselves, were seized upon as lawful prey, and -tortured to death according to the established rules and practice of the -day. In a word, we do not like Shakespear’s poems, because we like his -plays: the one, in all their excellencies, are just the reverse of the -other. It has been the fashion of late to cry up our author’s poems, as -equal to his plays: this is the desperate cant of modern criticism. We -would ask, was there the slightest comparison between Shakespear, and -either Chaucer or Spenser, as mere poets? Not any.—The two poems of -Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrece appear to us like a couple -of ice-houses. They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The -author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his -subject,—not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall -say; and as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts into their -mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which -it shews the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The whole is -laboured, up-hill work. The poet is perpetually singling out the -difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill -in wrestling with them. He is making perpetual trials of them as if his -mastery over them were doubted. The images, which are often striking, -are generally applied to things which they are the least like: so that -they do not blend with the poem, but seem stuck upon it, like splendid -patch-work, or remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances, -painted and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an -endless commentary upon it. The speakers are like persons who have both -leisure and inclination to make riddles on their own situation, and to -twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. -Everything is spun out into allegory; and a digression is always -preferred to the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words; -the hero or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from the -force of dialectics. There is besides a strange attempt to substitute -the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us _see_ their -feelings in the faces of the persons; and again, consistently with this, -in the description of the picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those -circumstances are chiefly insisted on, which it would be impossible to -convey except by words. The invocation to opportunity in the Tarquin and -Lucrece is full of thoughts and images, but at the same time it is -overloaded by them. The concluding stanza expresses all our objections -to this kind of poetry:— - - ‘Oh! idle words, servants to shallow fools; - Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators; - Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; - Debate when leisure serves with dull debaters; - To trembling clients be their mediators: - For me I force not argument a straw, - Since that my case is past all help of law.’ - -The description of the horse in Venus and Adonis has been particularly -admired, and not without reason:— - - ‘Round hoof’d, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, - Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide, - High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong, - Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide, - Look what a horse should have, he did not lack, - Save a proud rider on so proud a back.’ - -Now this inventory of perfections shews great knowledge of the horse; -and is good matter-of-fact poetry. Let the reader but compare it with a -speech in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ where Theseus describes his -hounds— - - ‘And their heads are hung - With ears that sweep away the morning dew’— - -and he will perceive at once what we mean by the difference between -Shakespear’s own poetry, and that of his plays. We prefer the Passionate -Pilgrim very much to the Lover’s Complaint. It has been doubted whether -the latter poem is Shakespear’s. - -Of the Sonnets we do not well know what to say. The subject of them -seems to be somewhat equivocal; but many of them are highly beautiful in -themselves, and interesting as they relate to the state of the personal -feelings of the author. The following are some of the most striking:— - - - CONSTANCY - - ‘Let those who are in favour with their stars, - Of public honour and proud titles boast, - Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, - Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most. - Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread, - But as the marigold in the sun’s eye; - And in themselves their pride lies buried, - For at a frown they in their glory die. - The painful warrior famous’d for fight, - After a thousand victories once foil’d, - Is from the book of honour razed quite, - And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d: - Then happy I, that love and am belov’d, - Where I may not remove, nor be remov’d.’ - - - LOVE’S CONSOLATION - - ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, - I all alone beweep my out-cast state, - And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, - And look upon myself, and curse my fate, - Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, - Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, - Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, - With what I most enjoy contented least: - Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, - Haply I think on thee,—and then my state - (Like to the lark at break of day arising - From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; - For thy sweet love remember’d, such wealth brings, - That then I scorn to change my state with kings.’ - - - NOVELTY - - ‘My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming - I love not less, though less the show appear: - That love is merchandis’d, whose rich esteeming - The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere. - Our love was new, and then but in the spring, - When I was wont to greet it with my lays: - As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, - And stops his pipe in growth of riper days: - Not that the summer is less pleasant now - Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, - But that wild music burdens every bough, - And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. - Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, - Because I would not dull you with my song.’ - - - LIFE’S DECAY - - ‘That time of year thou may’st in me behold - When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang - Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, - Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. - In me thou seest the twilight of such day, - As after sun-set fadeth in the west, - Which by and by black night doth take away, - Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. - In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, - That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, - As the death-bed whereon it must expire, - Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. - This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, - To love that well which thou must leave ere long.’ - -In all these, as well as in many others, there is a mild tone of -sentiment, deep, mellow, and sustained, very different from the -crudeness of his earlier poems. - - - End of THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS. - ------ - -Footnote 64: - - A few alterations and corrections have been inserted in the present - edition. - - [Note by W. H. to Second Edition.] - -Footnote 65: - - See the passage, beginning—‘It is impossible you should see this, were - they as prime as goats,’ etc. - -Footnote 66: - - ‘_Iago._ Ay, too gentle. - - _Othello._ Nay, that’s certain.’ - -Footnote 67: - - In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of - the poet’s exact observation of nature:— - - ‘There is a willow growing o’er a brook, - That shews its hoary leaves i’ th’ glassy stream.’ - - The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a - whitish colour, and the reflection would therefore be ‘hoary.’ - -Footnote 68: - - See an article, called _Theatralia_, in the second volume of the - _Reflector_, by Charles Lamb. - -Footnote 69: - - There is another instance of the same distinction in Hamlet and - Ophelia. Hamlet’s pretended madness would make a very good real - madness in any other author. - -Footnote 70: - - The river wanders at its own sweet will.—WORDSWORTH. - -Footnote 71: - - The lady, we here see, gives up the argument, but keeps her mind. - - - - - A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. - - - [The title-page of the original edition is as follows: _A Letter to - William Gifford, Esq. From William Hazlitt, Esq. ‘Fit pugil, et - medicum urget.’ London: Printed for John Miller, Burlington Arcade, - Piccadilly. 1819. Price Three Shillings._ A so-called ‘second - edition’ of 1820 consisted of the unsold copies with a fresh - title-page: _London: Printed for Robert Stodart, 81 Strand. 1820._] - - - - - A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. - - -Sir,—You have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do -not like; and it will be the object of this letter to cure you of it. -You say what you please of others: it is time you were told what you -are. In doing this, give me leave to borrow the familiarity of your -style:—for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable. - -You are a little person, but a considerable cat’s-paw; and so far worthy -of notice. Your clandestine connexion with persons high in office -constantly influences your opinions, and alone gives importance to them. -You are the _Government Critic_, a character nicely differing from that -of a government spy—the invisible link, that connects literature with -the police. It is your business to keep a strict eye over all writers -who differ in opinion with his Majesty’s Ministers, and to measure their -talents and attainments by the standard of their servility and meanness. -For this office you are well qualified. Besides being the Editor of the -Quarterly Review, you are also paymaster of the band of Gentlemen -Pensioners; and when an author comes before you in the one capacity, -with whom you are not acquainted in the other, you know how to deal with -him. You have your cue beforehand. The distinction between truth and -falsehood you make no account of: you mind only the distinction between -Whig and Tory. Accustomed to the indulgence of your mercenary virulence -and party-spite, you have lost all relish as well as capacity for the -unperverted exercises of the understanding, and make up for the obvious -want of ability by a bare-faced want of principle. The same set of -thread-bare common-places, the same second-hand assortment of abusive -nicknames, the same assumption of little magisterial airs of -superiority, are regularly repeated; and the ready convenient lie comes -in aid of the dearth of other resources, and passes off, with impunity, -in the garb of religion and loyalty. If no one finds it out, why then -there is no harm done, _snug’s the word_; or if it should be detected, -it is a good joke, shews spirit and invention in proportion to its -grossness and impudence, and it is only a pity that what was so well -meant in so good a cause, should miscarry! The end sanctifies the means; -and you keep no faith with heretics in religion or government. You are -under the protection of the _Court_; and your zeal for your king and -country entitles you to say what you chuse of every public writer who -does not do all in his power to pamper the one into a tyrant, and to -trample the other into a herd of slaves. You derive your weight with the -great and powerful from the very circumstance that takes away all real -weight from your authority, _viz._ that it is avowedly, and upon every -occasion, exerted for no one purpose but to hold up to hatred and -contempt whatever opposes in the slightest degree and in the most -flagrant instances of abuse their pride and passions. You dictate your -opinions to a party, because not one of your opinions is formed upon an -honest conviction of the truth or justice of the case, but by collusion -with the prejudices, caprice, interest or vanity of your employers. The -mob of well-dressed readers who consult the Quarterly Review, know that -_there is no offence in it_. They put faith in it because they are aware -that it is ‘false and hollow, but will please the ear’; that it will -tell them nothing but what they would wish to believe. Your reasoning -comes under the head of Court-news; your taste is a standard of the -prevailing _ton_ in certain circles, like Ackerman’s dresses for May. -When you damn an author, one knows that he is not a favourite at Carlton -House. When you say that an author cannot write common sense or English, -you mean that he does not believe in the doctrine of _divine right_. Of -course, the clergy and gentry will not read such an author. Your praise -or blame has nothing to do with the merits of a work, but with the party -to which the writer belongs, or is in the inverse _ratio_ of its merits. -The dingy cover that wraps the pages of the Quarterly Review does not -contain a concentrated essence of taste and knowledge, but is a -receptacle for the scum and sediment of all the prejudice, bigotry, -ill-will, ignorance, and rancour, afloat in the kingdom. This the fools -and knaves who pin their faith on you know, and it is on this account -they pin their faith on you. They come to you for a scale not of -literary talent but of political subserviency. They want you to set your -mark of approbation on a writer as a thorough-paced tool, or of -reprobation as an honest man. Your fashionable readers, Sir, are -hypocrites as well as knaves and fools; and the watch-word, the -practical intelligence they want, must be conveyed to them without -implied offence to their candour and liberality, in the _patois_ and -gibberish of fraud of which you are a master. When you begin to jabber -about common sense and English, they know what to be at, shut up the -book, and wonder that any respectable publisher can be found to let it -lie on his counter, as much as if it were a Petition for Reform. Do you -suppose, Sir, that such persons as the Rev. Gerard Valerian Wellesley -and the Rev. Weeden Butler would not be glad to ruin what they call a -Jacobin author as well as a Jacobin stationer?[72] Or that they will not -thank you for persuading them that their doing so in the former case is -a proof of their taste and good sense, as well as loyalty and religion? -You know very well that if a particle of truth or fairness were to find -its way into a single number of your publication, another Quarterly -Review would be set up to-morrow for the express purpose of depriving -every author, in prose or verse, of his reputation and livelihood, who -is not a regular hack of the vilest cabal that ever disgraced this or -any other country. - -There is something in your nature and habits that fits you for the -situation into which your good fortune has thrown you. In the first -place, you are in no danger of exciting the jealousy of your patrons by -a mortifying display of extraordinary talents, while your sordid -devotion to their will and to your own interest at once ensures their -gratitude and contempt. To crawl and lick the dust is all they expect of -you, and all you can do. Otherwise they might fear your power, for they -could have no dependence on your fidelity: but they take you with safety -and fondness to their bosoms; for they know that if you cease to be a -tool, you cease to be anything. If you had an exuberance of wit, the -unguarded use of it might sometimes glance at your employers; if you -were sincere yourself, you might respect the motives of others; if you -had sufficient understanding, you might attempt an argument, and fail in -it. But luckily for yourself and your admirers, you are but the dull -echo, ‘the tenth transmitter’ of some hackneyed jest: the want of all -manly and candid feeling in yourself only excites your suspicion and -antipathy to it in others, as something at which your nature recoils: -your slowness to understand makes you quick to misrepresent; and you -infallibly make nonsense of what you cannot possibly conceive. What seem -your wilful blunders are often the felicity of natural parts, and your -want of penetration has all the appearance of an affected petulance! - -Again, of an humble origin yourself, you recommend your performances to -persons of fashion by always abusing _low people_, with the smartness of -a lady’s waiting woman, and the independent spirit of a travelling -tutor. Raised from the lowest rank to your present despicable eminence -in the world of letters, you are indignant that any one should attempt -to rise into notice, except by the same regular trammels and servile -gradations, or should go about to separate the stamp of merit from the -badge of sycophancy. The silent listener in select circles, and menial -tool of noble families, you have become the oracle of Church and State. -The purveyor to the prejudices or passions of a private patron succeeds, -by no other title, to regulate the public taste. You have felt the -inconveniences of poverty, and look up with base and groveling -admiration to the advantages of wealth and power: you have had to -contend with the mechanical difficulties of a want of education, and you -see nothing in learning but its mechanical uses. A self-taught man -naturally becomes a pedant, and mistakes the means of knowledge for the -end, unless he is a man of genius; and you, Sir, are not a man of -genius. From having known nothing originally, you think it a great -acquisition to know anything now, no matter what or how small it is—nay, -the smaller and more insignificant it is, the more curious you seem to -think it, as it is farther removed from common sense and human nature. -The collating of points and commas is the highest game your literary -ambition can reach to, and the squabbles of editors are to you -infinitely more important than the meaning of an author. You think more -of the letter than the spirit of a passage; and in your eagerness to -show your minute superiority over those who have gone before you, -generally miss both. In comparing yourself with others, you make a -considerable mistake. You suppose the common advantages of a liberal -education to be something peculiar to yourself, and calculate your -progress beyond the rest of the world from the obscure point at which -you first set out. Yet your overweening self-complacency is never easy -but in the expression of your contempt for others; like a conceited -mechanic in a village ale-house, you would set down every one who -differs from you as an ignorant blockhead; and very fairly infer that -any one who is beneath yourself must be nothing. You have been well -called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic. From the difficulty you yourself -have in constructing a sentence of common grammar, and your frequent -failures, you instinctively presume that no author who comes under the -lash of your pen can understand his mother-tongue: and again, you -suspect every one who is not your ‘very good friend’ of knowing nothing -of the Greek or Latin, because you are surprised to think how you came -by your own knowledge of them. There is an innate littleness and -vulgarity in all you do. In combating an opinion, you never take a broad -and liberal ground, state it fairly, allow what there is of truth or an -appearance of truth, and then assert your own judgment by exposing what -is deficient in it, and giving a more masterly view of the subject. No: -this would be committing your powers and pretensions where you dare not -trust them. You know yourself better. You deny the meaning altogether, -misquote or misapply, and then plume yourself on your own superiority to -the absurdity you have created. Your triumph over your antagonists is -the triumph of your cunning and mean-spiritedness over some nonentity of -your own making; and your wary self-knowledge shrinks from a comparison -with any but the most puny pretensions, as the spider retreats from the -caterpillar into its web. - -There cannot be a greater nuisance than a dull, envious, pragmatical, -low-bred man, who is placed as you are in the situation of the Editor of -such a work as the Quarterly Review. Conscious that his reputation -stands on very slender and narrow grounds, he is naturally jealous of -that of others. He insults over unsuccessful authors; he hates -successful ones. He is angry at the faults of a work; more angry at its -excellences. If an opinion is old, he treats it with supercilious -indifference; if it is new, it provokes his rage. Everything beyond his -limited range of inquiry, appears to him a paradox and an absurdity: and -he resents every suggestion of the kind as an imposition on the public, -and an imputation on his own sagacity. He cavils at what he does not -comprehend, and misrepresents what he knows to be true. Bound to go -through the nauseous task of abusing all those who are not like himself -the abject tools of power, his irritation increases with the number of -obstacles he encounters, and the number of sacrifices he is obliged to -make of common sense and decency to his interest and self-conceit. Every -instance of prevarication he wilfully commits makes him more in love -with hypocrisy, and every indulgence of his hired malignity makes him -more disposed to repeat the insult and the injury. His understanding -becomes daily more distorted, and his feelings more and more callous. -Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with -prostituted impotence and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre -reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and -impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; -mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, -not to be imposed upon by shallow appearances; unprincipled rancour for -zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, peevish -effusions of bodily pain and mental imbecility for proofs of refinement -of taste and strength of understanding. - -Such, Sir, is the picture of which you have sat for the outline:—all -that remains is to fill up the little, mean, crooked, dirty details. The -task is to me no very pleasant one; for I can feel very little ambition -to follow you through your ordinary routine of pettifogging objections -and barefaced assertions, the only difficulty of making which is to -throw aside all regard to truth and decency, and the only difficulty in -answering them is to overcome one’s contempt for the writer. But you are -a nuisance, and should be abated. - -I shall proceed to shew, first, your want of common honesty, in speaking -of particular persons; and, secondly, your want of common capacity, in -treating of any general question. It is this double negation of -understanding and principle that makes you all that you are.—As an -instance of the summary manner in which you dispose of any author who is -not to your taste, you began your account of the first work of mine you -thought proper to notice (the Round Table), with a paltry and deliberate -falsehood. I need not be at much pains to shew that your opinion on the -merits of a work is not of much value, after I have shewn that your word -is not to be taken with respect to the author. The charges which you -brought against me as the writer of that work, were chiefly these -four:—1st, That I pretended to have written a work in the manner of the -Spectator; I answer, this is a falsehood. The Advertisement to that work -is written expressly to disclaim any such idea, and to apologise for the -work’s having fallen short of the original intention of the projector -(Mr. Leigh Hunt), from its execution having devolved almost entirely -upon me, who had undertaken merely to furnish a set of essays and -criticisms, which essays and criticisms were here collected together.—2. -That I was not only a professed imitator of Addison, but a great coiner -of new words and phrases: I answer, this is also a deliberate and -contemptible falsehood. You have filled a paragraph with a catalogue of -these new words and phrases, which you attribute to me, and single out -as the particular characteristics of my style, not any one of which I -have used. This you knew.—3. You say I write eternally about -washerwomen. I answer, no such thing. There is indeed one paper in the -Round Table on this subject, and I think a very agreeable one. I may say -so, for it is not my writing.—4. You say that ‘I praise my own -chivalrous eloquence’: and I answer, that’s a falsehood; and that you -knew that I had not applied these words to myself, because you knew that -it was not I who had used them. The last paragraph of the article in -question is true: for as if to obviate the detection of this tissue of -little, lying, loyal, catchpenny frauds, it contains a cunning, tacit -acknowledgment of them; but says, with equal candour and modesty, that -it is not the business of the writer to distinguish (in such trifling -cases) between truth and falsehood. That may be; but I cannot think that -for the editor of the Quarterly Review to want common veracity, is any -disgrace to me. It is necessary, Sir, to go into the details of this -fraudulent transaction, this Albemarle-street hoax, that the public may -know, once for all, what to think of you and me. The first paragraph of -the Review is couched in the following terms. - -‘Whatever may have been the preponderating feelings with which we closed -these volumes, we will not refuse our acknowledgments to Mr. Hazlitt for -a few mirthful sensations,’ (that they were very few, I can easily -believe,) ‘which he has enabled us to mingle with the rest, by the hint -that his Essays were meant to be “in the manner of the Spectator and -Tatler.” The passage in which this is conveyed, happened to be nearly -the last to which we turned; and we were about to rise from the Round -Table, heavily oppressed with a recollection of vulgar descriptions, -silly paradoxes, flat truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill -humour, and rancorous abuse, when we were first informed of the modest -pretensions of our host. Our thoughts then reverted with an eager -impulse to the urbanity of Addison, his unassuming tone, and clear -simplicity; to the ease and softness of his style, to the chearful -benevolence of his heart. The playful gaiety too, and the tender -feelings of his coadjutor, poor Steele, came forcibly to our memory. The -effect of the ludicrous contrast thus presented to us, it would be -somewhat difficult to describe. We think that it was akin to what we -have felt from the admirable _nonchalance_ with which Liston, in the -complex character of a weaver and an ass, seems to throw away all doubt -of his being the most accomplished lover in the universe, and receives, -as if they were merely his due, the caresses of the fairy -queen.’—Quarterly Review, No. xxxiii. p. 154. - -The advertisement prefixed to the Round Table, in which the hint is -conveyed which afforded you ‘a few mirthful sensations,’ stood thus.— - -‘The following work falls somewhat short of its title and original -intention. It was proposed by my friend Mr. Hunt, to publish a series of -papers in the Examiner, in the manner of the early periodical essayists, -the Spectator and Tatler. These papers were to be contributed by various -persons on a variety of subjects; and Mr. Hunt, as the editor, was to -take the characteristic or dramatic part of the work upon himself. I -undertook to furnish occasional essays and criticisms; one or two other -friends promised their assistance; but the essence of the work was to be -miscellaneous. The next thing was to fix upon a title for it. After much -doubtful consultation, that of THE ROUND TABLE was agreed upon, as most -descriptive of its nature and design. But our plan had been no sooner -arranged and entered upon, than Buonaparte landed at Frejus, _et voila -la Table Ronde dissoute_. Our little Congress was broken up as well as -the great one. Politics called off the attention of the Editor from the -belles lettres; and the task of continuing the work fell chiefly upon -the person who was least able to give life and spirit to the original -design. A want of variety in the subjects, and mode of treating them, -is, perhaps, the least disadvantage resulting from this circumstance. -All the papers in the two volumes here offered to the public, were -written by myself and Mr. Hunt, except a letter communicated by a friend -in the sixteenth number. Out of the fifty-two numbers, twelve are Mr. -Hunt’s, with the signatures L. H. or H. T. For all the rest I am -answerable. W. HAZLITT.’ - -Such, Sir, is the passage to which you allude, with so much hysterical -satisfaction, as having let you into the secret that I fancied myself to -have produced a work ‘in the manner of the Spectator and Tatler’; and as -having relieved you from the extreme uneasiness you had felt in reading -through the ‘vulgar descriptions, silly paradoxes, flat truisms, misty -sophistry, broken English, ill humour, and rancorous abuse,’ contained -in the Round Table. If I had indeed given myself out for a second Steele -or Addison, I should have made a very ludicrous mistake. As it is, it is -you have made a wilful misstatement. Your oppression, Sir, in rising -from the Round Table, must have been great to put you upon so desperate -an expedient to divert your chagrin, as that of affecting to suppose -that I had said just the contrary of what I did say, in order that you -might affect ‘a few mirthful sensations’ at my expence. I cannot say -that I envy you the little voluntary revulsion which your feelings -underwent, at the ludicrous comparison which you fancy me to make -between myself and Addison, on purpose to indulge the suggestions of -your spleen and prejudice. These are among the last refinements, the -_menus plaisirs_ of hypocrisy, of which I must remain in ignorance. I -will not require you to retract the assertion you have made, but I will -take care before I have done, that any assertion you may make with -respect to me shall not be taken as current. As to your praise of the -Tatler and Spectator, I must at all times agree to it: but as far as it -was meant as a tacit reproof to my vanity in comparing myself with these -authors, it appears to have been unnecessary. You say elsewhere, -speaking of some passage of mine—‘Addison never wrote anything so -fine!’—and again that I fancy myself a finer writer than Addison. By -your uneasy jealousy of the self-conceit of other people, it should seem -that you are in the habit of drawing comparisons, ‘secret, sweet, and -precious,’ between yourself and your ‘illustrious predecessors’ not much -to their advantage. As you have here thought proper to tell me what I do -not think, I will tell you what I do think, which is, that you could not -have written the passage in question, _On the Progress of Arts_, because -you never felt half the enthusiasm for what is fine. - -2. After stating the pretensions of the work, you proceed to the style -in which it is written.—‘There is one merit which this author possesses -besides that of successful imitation—he is a very eminent creator of -words and phrases. Amongst a vast variety which have newly started up we -notice “firesider”—“kitcheny”—“to smooth up”—“to do off”—and “to tiptoe -down.” To _this_ we add a few of the author’s new-born phrases, which -bear sufficient marks of a kindred origin to entitle them to a place by -_their_ side. Such is the assertion that Spenser “was dipt in poetic -luxury”; the description of “a minute coil which clicks in the baking -coal”—of “a numerousness scattering an individual gusto”—and of “curls -that are ripe with sun shine.” _Our readers are perhaps by this time as -much acquainted with the style of this author as they have any desire to -be_,’ etc. - -I have nothing to do at present with the merits of the words or phrases, -which you here attribute to me, and make the test of my general style, -as if your readers truly if they persisted would find only a constant -repetition of them in my writings. I say that they are not mine at all; -that they are not characteristic of my style, that you knew this -perfectly, and also that there were reasons which prevented me from -pointing out this petty piece of chicanery; and farther, I say that I am -so far from being ‘a very eminent creator of words and phrases,’ that I -do not believe you can refer to an instance in anything I have written -in which there is a single new word or phrase. In fact, I am as -tenacious on this score of never employing any new words to express my -ideas, as you, Sir, are of never expressing any ideas that are not -perfectly thread-bare and commonplace. My style is as old as your -matter. This is the fault you at other times find with it, mistaking the -common idiom of the language for ‘broken English.’ - -3. You say that ‘I write eternally about washerwomen’; and pray, if I -did, what is that to you, Sir? There is a littleness in your objections -which makes even the answers to them ridiculous, and which would make it -impossible to notice them, were you not the Government-Critic. You say -yourself indeed afterwards that ‘It is he’ (Mr. Hunt) ‘who devotes _ten -or twelve pages_ to a dissertation on washerwomen.’ Good: what you say -on this subject is a fair specimen of your mind and manners. The playing -at fast-and-loose with the matter-of-fact may be passed over as a matter -of course in your hypercritical lucubrations. There is but one half -paper on this interdicted subject in the Round Table:—you have filled -one page out of five of the article in the Review with a ridicule of -this paper on account of the vulgarity of the subject, which offends you -exceedingly; you recur to it twice afterwards _en passant_, and end your -performance (somewhat in the style of a quack-doctor aping his own -merry-andrew) with ‘two or three conclusive digs in the side at it.’ -There is something in the subject that makes a strong impression on your -mind. You seem ‘to hate it with a perfect hatred.’[73] Now I would ask -where is the harm of this dissertation on washerwomen inserted in the -Round Table, any more than those of Dutch and Flemish kitchen-pieces, -the glossy brilliancy and high finishing of which must have become -familiar to your eye in the collections of Earl Grosvenor, Lord -Mulgrave, and the Marquis of Stafford? What has Mr. Hunt done in this -never-to-be forgiven paper to betray the lowness of his breeding or -sentiments, or to shew that he who wrote it is ‘the droll or merry -fellow of the piece,’ and that I who _did not write it_ am ‘a sour -Jacobin, who hate everything but washerwomen’? Would Addison or Steele, -‘poor Steele’ as you call him, have brought this as a capital charge -against their ‘imitators’? Did they instinctively direct their -speculations or limit their views of human life to ‘remarks on gentlemen -and gentlewomen’? They often enough treated of low people and familiar -life without any consciousness of degradation. ‘Their gorge did not -rise’ at the humble worth or homely enjoyments of their -fellow-creatures, like your’s. A coronet or a mitre were not the only -things that caught their jaundiced eye, or soothed their rising gall. -They who are always talking of high and low people are generally of a -vulgar origin themselves, and of an inherent meanness of disposition -which nothing can overcome. Besides, there is a want of good faith, as -well as of good taste, in your affected fastidiousness on this point. -‘You assume a vice, though you have it not,’ or not to the degree, which -your petulance and servility would have us suppose. A short time before -you wrote this uncalled-for tirade against Mr. Hunt as an exclusive -patroniser of that class of females, ycleped ‘washerwomen,’ he had -quoted with praise in the Examiner, and as a mark of tender and humane -feelings in the author, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the -following epitaph from the Gentleman’s Magazine. - - ‘EPITAPH BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. - -‘We are no friends, publicly speaking, to the author of the following -epitaph. We differ much with his politics, and with the cast of his -satire; and do not think him, properly speaking, a poet, as many do. But -we always admired the spirit that looked forth from his account of his -own life, and the touching copy of verses on a departed friend, that are -to be found in the notes to one of his satires; and there are feelings -and circumstances in this world, before which politics and satire, and -poetry, are of little importance’—(_How little knew’st thou of -Calista!_)—‘feelings, that triumph over infirmity and distaste of every -sort, and only render us anxious, in our respect for them, to be thought -capable of appreciating them ourselves. The world, with all its hubbub, -slides away from before one on such occasions; and we only see humanity -in all its better weakness, and let us add, in all its beauty. - -‘The author will think what he pleases of this effusion of ours. It is -an interval in the battle, during which we only wish to show ourselves -fellow-men with him. Afterwards, he may resume his hostilities, if he -has any, and we will draw our swords as before. - - _For the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ Dec. 18, 1815._ - - ‘Mr. Urban,—I am one of those who love to contemplate the “frail - memorials” of the dead, and do not, therefore, count the solitary - hours, occasionally spent in a church-yard, among the most - melancholy ones of my life. But in London, this is a gratification - rarely to be found; for, either through caution, or some less worthy - motive, the cemeteries are closed against the stranger. I have been - in the practice of passing by the chapel in South Audley Street, - Grosvenor Square, almost every day, for several weeks, yet never saw - the door of the burying-ground open till yesterday. I did not - neglect the opportunity thus offered, but walked in. I found it far - more spacious and airy than I expected; but I met with nothing very - novel or interesting till I came to a low tomb, plain but neat, - where I was both pleased and surprised by the following inscription, - which, I believe, has never yet appeared in print, and which seems - not unworthy of your miscellany. - - M. D. - - Here lies the Body - of ANN DAVIES, - (for more than twenty years) - Servant to William Gifford.[74] - She died February 6, 1815, - in the forty-third year of her age, - of a tedious and painful malady, - which she bore - with exemplary patience and resignation. - - Her deeply-afflicted master - erected this stone to her memory, - as a faithful testimony - of her uncommon worth, - and of his perpetual gratitude, - respect and affection, - for her long and meritorious services. - - Though here unknown, dear Ann, thy ashes rest, - Still lives thy memory in one grateful breast, - That traced thy course through many a painful year, - And marked thy humble hope, thy pious fear.— - O! when this frame, which yet, while life remained, - Thy duteous love, with trembling hand, sustained, - Dissolves (as soon it must) may that Bless’d Pow’r - Who beamed on thine, illume my parting hour! - So shall I greet thee, where no ills annoy, - And what was sown in grief, is reap’d in joy; - Where worth, obscured below, bursts into day, - And those are paid, whom Earth could never pay.’[75] - -It seems then, you can extract the pathetic though not the humorous, out -of persons who are not ‘gentlemen or gentlewomen.’ It was the amiable -weakness thus noticed, that made you take such pains to do away the -suspicion of a particular partiality for low people. You could not -afford ‘the frail memorial’ of your private virtues to get beyond the -inscription on a tomb-stone, or the poet’s corner of the Gentleman’s -Magazine. The natural sympathies of the undoubted translator of Juvenal -might be a prejudice to the official character of the anonymous editor -of the Quarterly Review. You were determined to hear no more of this -epitaph, and ‘other such dulcet diseases’[76] of yours.—You perhaps -recollect, Sir, that the columns of the Examiner newspaper, which gave -you such a premature or posthumous credit for some ‘compunctious -visitings of nature,’ also contained the first specimen of the Story of -Rimini. You seem to have said on that occasion with Iago, ‘You are well -tuned now,—but I’ll set down the pegs that make this music, _as honest -as I am_.’—That Mr. Hunt should have supposed it possible for a moment, -that a government automaton was accessible to anything like a liberal -concession, is one of those deplorable mistakes which constantly put men -who are ‘made of penetrable stuff,’ at the mercy of those who are not. -The amiable and elegant author of Rimini thought he was appealing to -something human in your breast, in the recollection of your ‘Dear Ann -Davies’; he touched the springs, and found them ‘stuffed with paltry -blurred sheets’ of the Quarterly Review, with notes from Mr. Murray, and -directions how to proceed with the author, from the Admiralty Scribe. -You retorted his sympathy with ‘one whom earth could never pay,’ by -laughing to scorn his honest laborious ‘tub-tumbling viragos,’ whose red -elbows and coarse fists prevented so inelegant a contrast to the pining -and sickly form whose loss you deplore. Is there anything in your nature -and disposition that draws to it only the infirm in body and oppressed -in mind; or that, while it clings to power for support, seeks -consolation in the daily soothing spectacle of physical malady or morbid -sensibility? The air you breathe seems to infect; and your friendship to -be a canker-worm that blights its objects with unwholesome and premature -decay. You are enamoured of suffering, and are at peace only with the -dead.—Even if you had been accessible to remorse as a political critic, -Mr. Hunt had committed himself with you (past forgiveness) in your -character of a pretender to poetry about town. The following lines in -his Feast of the Poets, must have occasioned you ‘a few mirthful -sensations,’ which you have not yet acknowledged, except by deeds.— - - ‘A hem was then heard, consequential and snapping, - And a sour little gentleman walked with a rap in. - He bow’d, look’d about him, seem’d cold, and sat down, - And said,[77] “I’m surpris’d that you’ll visit this town:— - To be sure, there are one or two of us who know you, - But as for the rest, they are all much below you. - So stupid, in general, the natives are grown, - They really prefer Scotch reviews to their own; - So that what with their taste, their reformers, and stuff, - They have sicken’d myself and my friends long enough.” - “Yourself and your friends!” cried the God in high glee; - “And pray my frank visitor, who may you be?” - “Who be?” cried the other; “why really—this tone— - William Gifford’s a name, I think pretty well known.” - “Oh—now I remember,” said Phœbus;—“ah true— - My thanks to that name are undoubtedly due: - The rod, that got rid of the Cruscas and Lauras, - —That plague of the butterflies—sav’d me the horrors; - The Juvenal too stops a gap in one’s shelf, - At least in what Dryden has not done himself; - And there’s something, which even distaste must respect, - In the self-taught example, that conquer’d neglect. - But not to insist on the recommendations - Of modesty, wit, and a small stock of patience, - My visit just now is to poets alone, - And not to small critics, however well known.” - So saying, he rang, to leave nothing in doubt, - And the sour little gentleman bless’d himself out.’ - -_Thus painters write their names at Co._ For this passage and the -temperate and judicious note which accompanies it, it is no wonder that -you put the author—of Rimini, in Newgate, without the Sheriff’s warrant. -In order to give as favourable an impression of that poem as you could, -you began your account of it by saying that it had been composed in -Newgate, though you knew that it had not; but you also knew that the -name of Newgate would sound more grateful to certain ears, to pour -flattering poison into which is the height of your abject ambition. In -this courtly inuendo which ushered in your wretched verbal criticism (it -is the more disgusting to see such gross and impudent prevarication -combined with such petty captiousness) you were guided not by a regard -to truth, but to your own ends; and yet you say somewhere, very -oracularly, out of contradiction to me, that ‘not to prefer the true to -the agreeable, where they are inconsistent, is folly.’ You have mistaken -the word: it is not folly, but knavery.[78] - -4. You say you have no objection to my ‘praising my own chivalrous -eloquence’; and I say that the insinuation is impertinent and untrue. -The paper in which that phrase occurs is written by Mr. Hunt, as you -know, and is an answer to some observations of mine on the poetical -temperament in a preceding number _On the Causes of Methodism_. Mr. -Hunt’s having taken upon him ‘to praise my chivalrous eloquence,’ -without consulting you, appeared no doubt a great piece of presumption; -and you punished me by magnifying this indiscretion into the enormity of -my having praised myself. I might as well say that Mr. Canning had made -a fulsome eulogy on his own private virtues and public principles in -your dedication of the edition of Ben Jonson to him.—You say indeed in -the last paragraph of your criticism that ‘you understand some of the -papers to be by Mr. Hunt; that it is he who is the droll or merry fellow -of the piece; who has shocked you by writing eternally about -washerwomen, etc. but that you cannot stay to distinguish between us, -and that we must divide our respective share of merit between -ourselves.’ The share of merit in that work may indeed be so small that -it is of little consequence who has the reversion of any part of it, but -I will take care that a cat’s-paw shall not be put on the pannel of my -_quantum meruit_, nor take measure of my capacity with a mechanic rule, -marked by ignorance and servility, nor turn the scale of public opinion -by throwing in false weights as he pleases, nor make both of us -ridiculous, by attributing to each the peculiarities of the other, with -whatever exaggerated interpretation he chuses to put upon them. By this -transposition of persons, which is not a matter of indifference as you -pretend, you gain this advantage which you have no right to gain. You -can at any time apply to me or Mr. Hunt the obnoxious points in your -account of either, and improve upon them, as it suits your purpose. By -combining the extremes of individual character, you make a very strange -and wilful compound of your own. It is the same person, and yet it is -not one person but two persons, according to the critical creed you -would establish, who is a merry fellow, and a sour Jacobin; who is all -gaiety and all gloom; a person who rails at poets, and yet is himself a -poet; a hater of cats, and of cat’s-paws;[79] a reviler of Mr. Pitt, and -a panegyrist upon washerwomen. If, Sir, your friend, Mr. Hoppner, of -whom, as you tell us[80] you discreetly said nothing, while he was -struggling with obscurity, lest it should be imputed to the partiality -of friendship, but whom you praised and dedicated to, as soon as he -became popular, to shew your disinterestedness and deference to public -opinion, if even this artist, whom you celebrate as a painter of -flattering likenesses, had undertaken to unite in one piece the most -striking features and characteristic expression of his and your common -friends, had improved your lurking archness of look into Mr. Murray’s -gentle, downcast obliquity of vision; had joined Mr. Canning’s drooping -nose to Mr. Croker’s aspiring chin, the clear complexion (the _splendida -bilis_) of the one, to the candid self-complacent aspect of the other; -had forced into the same preposterous medley, the invincible _hauteur_ -and satanic pride of Mr. Pitt’s physiognomy, with the dormant meaning -and admirable nonchalance of Lord Castlereagh’s features, the manly -sleekness of Charles Long, and the monumental outline of John -Kemble—what mortal would have owned the likeness!—I too, Sir, must claim -the privilege of the _principium individuationis_, for myself as well as -my neighbours; I will sit for no man’s picture but my own, and not to -you for that; I am not desirous to play so many parts as Bottom, and as -to his ass’s head which you would put upon my shoulders, it will do for -you to wear the next time you shew yourself in Mr. Murray’s shop, or for -your friend Mr. Southey to take with him, whenever he appears at Court. - -As to the difference of political sentiment between the writer of the -Round Table and the writer of the article in the Review, which forms the -heavy burthen of your flippant censure, I cannot consider that as an -accusation. You have many other objections to make: such as that, -because Mr. Addison wrote some very pleasing papers on the Pleasures of -the Imagination, I am not willing to fall short of ‘my illustrious -predecessor’; and ‘accordingly,’ you say, ‘we hear much of poetry and of -painting, and of music and of _gusto_.’ Is this the only reason you can -conceive why any one should take an interest in such things; or did you -write your Baviad and Mæviad that you might not fall short of Pope, your -translation of Juvenal that you might surpass Dryden, or did you turn -commentator on the poets, that you might be on a par with ‘your -illustrious predecessors’—‘from slashing Bentley down to piddling -Theobalds’? Of Hogarth you make me say, quoting from your favourite -treatise on washerwomen, that ‘he is too apt to perk morals and -sentiments in your face.’ You cannot comprehend my definition of -_gusto_, which you do not ascribe to any defect in yourself. My account -of Titian and Vandyke’s colouring, appears to you very odd, because it -is like the things described, and you have no idea of the things -described. If I had described the style of these two painters in terms -applicable to them both, and to all other painters, you would have -thought the precision of the style equal to the justness of the -sentiment. A distinction without a difference satisfies you, for you can -understand or repeat a common-place. It is the pointing out the real -differences of things that offends you, for you have no idea of what is -meant; and a writer who gets at all below the surface of a question, -necessarily gets beyond your depth, and you can hardly contain your -wonder at his presumption and shallowness. You quote half a dozen -detached sentences of mine, as ‘convincing instances of affectation and -paradox,’ (such as, _The definition of a true patriot is a good hater—He -who speaks two languages has no country_, etc.) and which taken from the -context to which they belong, and of which they are brought as extreme -illustrations, may be so, but which you cannot answer in the connection -in which they stand, and which you detach from the general speculation -with which you dare not cope, to bring them more into the focus of your -microscopic vision, and that you may deal with them more at ease and in -safety on your old ground of literal and verbal quibbling. - -You do not like the subjects of my Essays in general. You complain in -particular of ‘my eager vituperation of good nature and good-natured -people’; and yet with this you have, as I should take it, nought to do: -you object to my sweeping abuse of poets, as (with the exception of -Milton) dishonest men,[81] with which you have as little to do; you are -no poet, and of course, honest! You do not like my abuse of the Scotch -at which the Irish were delighted, nor my abuse of the Irish at which -the Scotch were not displeased, nor my abuse of the English, which I can -understand; but I wonder you should not like my abuse of the French. You -say indeed that ‘no abuse which is directed against whole classes of men -is of much importance,’ and yet you and your Anti-Jacobin friends have -been living upon this sort of abuse for the last twenty years. You add -with characteristic ‘no meaning’—‘_If undeserved_, it is utterly -impotent and may be well utterly despised.’ The last part of the -proposition may be true, but abuse is not without effect, because -undeserved, nor is a thing utterly impotent because it is thoroughly -despicable. You, Sir, have power which is considerable, in proportion as -it is despicable! - -I confess, Sir, the Round Table did not take; ‘it was _Caveare_ to the -multitude,’ but the reason, I think, was not that the abuse in it was -undeserved, but that I have there spoken the truth of too many persons -and things. In writing it, I preferred the true to the agreeable, which -I find to be an unpardonable fault. Yet I am not aware of any sentiment -in the work which ought to give offence to an honest and inquiring mind, -for I think there is none that does not evidently proceed from a -conviction of its truth and a bias to what is right. My object in -writing it was to set down such observations as had occurred to me from -time to time on different subjects, and as appeared to be any ways worth -preserving. I wished to make a sort of _Liber Veritatis_, a set of -studies from human life. As my object was not to flatter, neither was it -to offend or contradict others, but to state my own feelings or opinions -such as they really were, but more particularly of course when this had -not been done before, and where I thought I could throw any new light -upon a subject. In doing so, I endeavoured to fix my attention only on -the thing I was writing about, and which had struck me in some -particular manner, which I wished to point out to others, with the best -reasons or explanations I could give. I was not the slave of prejudices; -nor do I think I was the dupe of my own vanity. To repeat what has been -said a thousand times is common-place: to contradict it because it has -been so said, is not originality. A truth is, however, not the worse but -the better for being new. I did not try to think with the multitude nor -to differ with them, but to think for myself; and the having done this -with some boldness and some effect is the height of my offending. I -wrote to the public with the same sincerity and want of disguise as if I -had been making a register of my private thoughts; and this has been -construed by some into a breach of decorum. The affectation I have been -accused of was merely my sometimes stating a thing in an extreme point -of view for fear of not being understood; and my love of paradox may, I -think, be accounted for from the necessity of counteracting the -obstinacy of prejudice. If I have been led to carry a remark too far, it -was because others would not allow it to have any force at all. My -object was to shew the latent operation of some unsuspected principle, -and I therefore took only some one view of that particular subject. I -was chiefly anxious that the germ of thought should be true and -original; that I should put others in possession of what I meant, and -then left it to find its level in the operation of common sense, and to -have its excesses corrected by other causes. The principle will be found -true, even where the application is extravagant or partial. I have not -been wedded to my particular speculations with the spirit of a partisan. -I wrote for instance an Essay on Pedantry, to qualify the extreme -contempt into which it has fallen, and to shew the necessary advantages -of an absorption of the whole mind in some favourite study, and I wrote -an Essay on the Ignorance of the Learned to lessen the undue admiration -of Learning, and to shew that it is not everything. I gained very few -converts to either of these opinions. You reproach me with the cynical -turn of many of my Essays, which are in fact prose-satires; but when you -say I hate every thing but washerwomen, you forget what you had before -said that I was a great imitator of Addison, and wrote much about -‘poetry and painting, and music and _gusto_.’ You make no mention of my -character of Rousseau, or of the paper on Actors and Acting. You also -forget my praise of John Buncle! As to my style, I thought little about -it. I only used the word which seemed to me to signify the idea I wanted -to convey, and I did not rest till I had got it. In seeking for truth, I -sometimes found beauty. As to the facility of which you, Sir, and others -accuse me, it has not been acquired at once nor without pains. I was -eight years in writing eight pages, under circumstances of inconceivable -and ridiculous discouragement. As to my figurative and gaudy -phraseology, you reproach me with it because you never heard of what I -had written in my first dry manner. I afterwards found a popular mode of -writing necessary to convey subtle and difficult trains of reasoning, -and something more than your meagre vapid style, to force attention to -original observations, which did not restrict themselves to making a -parade of the discovery of a worm-eaten date, or the repetition of an -obsolete prejudice. You say that it is impossible to remember what I -write after reading it:—One remembers to have read what you -write—_before_! In that you have the advantage of me, to be sure. You in -vain endeavour to account for the popularity of some of my writings, -from the trick of arranging words in a variety of forms without any -correspondent ideas, like the newly-invented optical toy. You have not -hit upon the secret, nor will you be able to avail yourself of it when I -tell you. It is the old story—_that I think what I please, and say what -I think_. This accounts, Sir, for the difference between you and me in -so many respects. I think only of the argument I am defending; you are -only thinking whether you write grammar. My opinions are founded on -reasons which I try to give; yours are governed by motives which you -keep to yourself. It has been my business all my life to get at the -truth as well as I could, merely to satisfy my own mind: it has been -yours to suppress the evidence of your senses and the dictates of your -understanding, if you ever found them at variance with your convenience -or the caprices of others. I do not suppose you ever in your life took -an interest in any abstract question for its own sake, or have a -conception of the possibility of any one else doing so. If you had, you -would hardly insist on my changing characters with you. Yet you make -this the condition of my receiving any favour or lenity at your hands. -It is no matter, Sir: I will try to do without it. - -It appears by your own account, that all the other offences of the Round -Table would hardly have roused your resentment, had it not been that I -have spoken of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Burke, not in the hackneyed terms of a -treasury underling. It was this that filled up the measure of my -iniquity, and the storm burst on my devoted head. After quoting one or -two half sentences from the character of Mr. Pitt,[82] in which I -ascribe the influence of his oratory almost entirely to a felicitous and -imposing arrangement of words, and the whole of a short note on Mr. -Burke’s political apostacy, which I had fancifully ascribed to his -jealousy of Rousseau, you add with great sincerity:—‘We are far from -intending to write a single word in answer to this loathsome trash’—(it -would have been well if you had made and kept the same resolution in -other cases,) ‘but we confess that these passages chiefly excited us to -take the trouble of noticing the work. The author might have described -washerwomen for ever; complimented himself unceasingly on his own -“chivalrous eloquence”; prosed interminably about Chaucer; written, if -possible, in a more affected, silly, confused, ungrammatical style, and -believed, as he now believes, that he was surpassing Addison, we should -not have meddled with him; but if the creature, in his endeavours to -crawl into the light, must take his way over the tombs of illustrious -men, disfiguring the records of their greatness with the slime and filth -which marks his track, it is right to point him out that he may be flung -back to the situation in which nature designed that he should grovel’ p. -159. And this, Sir, from you who wrote or procured to be inserted in the -Quarterly Review, that nefarious attack on the character of Mr. Fox, -which was distinguished and is still remembered among the slime and -filth which has marked its track into day, over the characters and -feelings of the living and the dead. If I, Sir, had written that ‘foul -and vulgar invective’ against an individual whom you did not choose to -let ‘rest in his grave,’ if I had been ‘such a thing’ as the writer of -that article, I might, (as you say,) have described washerwomen for -ever, and have fancied myself a better writer than ‘the courtly -Addison,’ and you, Sir, would have encouraged me in the delusion, for I -should have been a court-tool, _your_ tool. But you state the thing -clearly and unanswerably. I was not a court-tool, your tool, and -therefore I was to be made your victim. There is a difference of -political opinion between you and me; therefore you undertake not only -to condemn that opinion, but to proscribe the writer. Do you do this on -your own authority, or on Mr. Croker’s, or on whose? As I did not -consider it as sacrilege to criticise the style and the opinions of the -two great men who have contributed to make this country what it is, a -fief held by a junto, of which men like you are the organs, in trust and -for the benefit of the common cause of despotism throughout Europe, I, -and every other writer like me, professing or maintaining anything like -independence of spirit or consistency of opinion, is ‘to be flung back -into his original obscurity, and stifled in the filth and slime’ of the -Quarterly Review, or its drain, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. You -began the experiment upon the Round Table; you have tried it twice -since, and for the last time. - -If any doubts could ever have been entertained on the subject of your -motives and views, you have taken care to remove them. Thus you conclude -your account of the characters of Shakespear’s plays with saying, that -you should not have condescended to notice the senseless and wicked -sophistry of the work at all, but that ‘you conceived it might not be -unprofitable to shew how small a portion of talent and literature is -necessary to carry on the trade of sedition.’ I should think it requires -as much talent and literature to carry on my trade as yours. This -acknowledgment of yours is ‘remarkable for its truth and _naiveté_.’ It -is a pledge from your own mouth of your impartiality and candour. With -this object in view, ‘you have selected a few specimens of my ethics and -criticism,’ (they are very few, and of course you would select no -others,) just sufficient, (with your garbling and additions,) to prove -‘that my knowledge of Shakespear and the English language is exactly on -a par with the purity of my morals, and the depth of my understanding.’ -But did it not occur to you in making this officious declaration, or -would it not occur to any one else in reading it, that this undertaking -of yours might be no less ‘profitable’ and acceptable, even supposing -the portion of talent displayed by the author not to be small but great? -Would it not be more necessary in this case to do away the scandal that -there was any talent or literature on the side of ‘sedition’? The -greater the shock given to the complacency of servility and corruption, -by an opinion getting abroad that there was any knowledge of Shakespear -or the English language except on the minister’s side of the question, -would it not be the more absolutely incumbent on you as the head of the -literary police, to arrest such an opinion in the outset, to crush it -before it gathered strength, and to produce the article in question as -your warrant? Why, what a disgrace to literature and to loyalty, if -owing to the neglect and supineness of the editor of the Quarterly -Review, a work written without an atom of cant or hypocrisy, and of -course with a very small portion of talent and literature, should, in -the space of three months get into a second edition, and be fast -advancing to a third, be noticed in the Edinburgh Review, and be talked -of by persons who never looked into the Examiner; and how necessary -without loss of time, to counteract the mischievous inference from all -this, restore the taste of the public to its legitimate tone, and -satisfy the courteous reader, who ‘was well affected to the constitution -in church and state as now established,’ that in future he must look for -a knowledge of Shakespear only in the editor of Ben Jonson, of the -English language in the private tutor of Lord Grosvenor, for purity of -morals in the translator of Juvenal, and for depth of understanding in -the notes to the Baviad and Mæviad! Your employers, Mr. Gifford, do not -pay their hirelings for nothing—for condescending to notice weak and -wicked sophistry; for pointing out to contempt what excites no -admiration; for cautiously selecting a few specimens of bad taste and -bad grammar, where nothing else is to be found. They want your -invincible pertness, your mercenary malice, your impenetrable dulness, -your barefaced impudence, your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your -hypocritical zeal, your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their -prejudices and pretensions, to fly-blow and taint public opinion, to -defeat independent efforts, to apply not the sting of the scorpion but -the touch of the torpedo to youthful hopes, to crawl and leave the slimy -track of sophistry and lies over every work that does not ‘dedicate its -sweet leaves’ to some luminary of the Treasury Bench, or is not fostered -in the hot-bed of corruption. This is your office; ‘this is what is -looked for at your hands, and this you do not baulk’—to sacrifice what -little honesty, and prostitute what little intellect you possess to any -dirty job you are commissioned to execute. ‘They keep you as an ape does -an apple, in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be last swallowed.’ -You are, by appointment, literary toad-eater to greatness, and taster to -the court. You have a natural aversion to whatever differs from your own -pretensions, and an acquired one for what gives offence to your -superiors. Your vanity panders to your interest, and your malice -truckles only to your love of power. If your instinctive or premeditated -abuse of your enviable trust were found wanting in a single instance; if -you were to make a single slip in getting up your select Committee of -Inquiry and Green Bag Report of the State of Letters, your occupation -would be gone. You would never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from a -great man, or a smile from a punk of quality. The great and powerful -(whom you call the wise and good) do not like to have the privacy of -their self-love startled by the obtrusive and unmanageable claims of -literature and philosophy, except through the intervention of persons -like you, whom, if they have common penetration, they soon find out to -be without any superiority of intellect; or, if they do not, whom they -can despise for their meanness of soul. You ‘have the office opposite to -St. Peter.’ You ‘keep a corner in the public mind, for foul prejudice -and corrupt power to knot and gender in’; you volunteer your services to -people of quality to ease scruples of mind and qualms of conscience; you -‘lay the flattering unction’ of venal prose and laurelled verse to their -souls. You persuade them that there is neither purity of morals, nor -depth of understanding, except in themselves and their hangers-on; and -would prevent the unhallowed names of liberty and humanity from being -ever whispered in ears polite! You, Sir, do you not do all this? I cry -you mercy then: I took you for the Editor of the Quarterly Review! - -In general, you wisely avoid committing yourself upon any question, -farther than to hint a difference of opinion, and to assume an air of -self-importance upon it. Thus you say, after quoting some remarks of -mine, not very respectful to Henry VIII. ‘We need not answer this -gabble,’ as if you were offended at its absurdity, not at its truth; and -were yourself ready to assert (were it worth while) that Henry VIII. was -an estimable character, or that he had not his minions and creatures -about him in his life-time, who were proud to hail him as the best of -kings. If so, you have the authority of Mr. Burke against you, who -indulges himself in a very Jacobinical strain of invective against this -bloated pattern of royalty, and brute-image of the Divinity. Do you mean -to say, that the circumstances of external pomp and unbridled power, -which I have pointed out in ‘the gabble you will not answer’ as -determining the character of kings, do not make them what for the most -part they are, feared in their life-time and scorned by after-ages? If -so, you must think Quevedo a libeller and incendiary, who makes his -guide to the infernal regions, on being asked ‘if there were no more -kings,’ answer emphatically—‘Here are all that ever lived!’ You say that -‘the mention of a court or of a king always throws me into a fit of -raving.’ Do you then really admire those plague spots of history, and -scourges of human nature, Richard II., Richard III., King John, and -Henry VIII.? Do you with Mr. Coleridge, in his late Lectures, contend -that not to fall down in prostration of soul before the abstract majesty -of kings as it is seen in the diminished perspective of centuries, -argues an inherent littleness of mind? Or do you extend the moral of -your maxim—‘Speak not of the imputed weaknesses of the Great’—beyond the -living to the dead, thus passing an attainder on history, and proving -‘truth to be a liar’ from the beginning? ‘Speak out, Grildrig!’ - -You do well to confine yourself to the hypocrite; for you have too -little talent for the sophist. Yet in two instances you have attempted -an answer to an opinion I had expressed; and in both you have shewn how -little you can understand the commonest question. The first is as -follows:—‘In his remarks upon Coriolanus, which contain the concentrated -venom of his malignity, he has libelled our great poet as a friend of -arbitrary power, in order that he may introduce an invective against -human nature. “Shakspeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the -arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt -for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the -rabble.”’ - -How do you prove that he did not? By shewing with a little delicate -insinuation how he would have done just what I say he did.—‘Shall we not -be dishonouring the gentle Shakspeare by answering such calumny, when -every page of his works supplies its refutation?’[83]—‘Who has painted -with more cordial feelings the tranquil innocence of humble life?’ -[True.] ‘Who has furnished more instructive lessons to the great upon -“the insolence of office”—“the oppressor’s wrong”—or the abuses of brief -authority’—[which you would hallow through all time]—‘or who has more -severely stigmatised those “who crook the pregnant hinges of the knee -where thrift may follow fawning?”’ [Granted, none better.] ‘It is true -he was not actuated by an envious hatred of greatness’—[so that to -stigmatise servility and corruption does not always proceed from envy -and a love of mischief]—‘he was not at all likely, had he lived in our -time, to be an orator in Spa-fields or the editor of a seditious Sunday -newspaper’—[To have delivered Mr. Coleridge’s _Conciones ad Populum_, or -to have written Mr. Southey’s Wat Tyler]—‘he knew what discord would -follow if degree were taken away’—[As it did in France from the taking -away the degree between the tyrant and the slave, and those little -convenient steps and props of it, the Bastile, Lettres de Cachet, and -Louis XV.‘s _Palais aux cerfs_]—‘And _therefore_, with the wise and good -of every age, he pointed out the injuries that must arise to society -from a turbulent rabble instigated to mischief by men not much more -enlightened, and infinitely more worthless than themselves.’ - -So that it would appear by your own account that Shakspeare had a -discreet leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, and, had he -lived in our time, would probably have been a writer in the Courier, or -a contributor to the Quarterly Review! It is difficult to know which to -admire most in this, the weakness or the cunning. I have said that -Shakspeare has described both sides of the question, and you ask me very -wisely, ‘Did he confine himself to one?’ No, I say that he did not: but -I suspect that he had a leaning to one side, and has given it more -quarter than it deserved. My words are: ‘_Coriolanus_ is a storehouse of -political common-places. The arguments for and against aristocracy and -democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on -liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here -very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a -philosopher. Shakspeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the -arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt -for his own origin, and to have spared no occasion of baiting the -rabble. _What he says of them is very true: what he says of their -betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it._’ - -I then proceed to account for this by shewing how it is that ‘the cause -of the people is but little calculated for a subject for poetry; or that -the language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power.’ I -affirm, Sir, that poetry, that the imagination, generally speaking, -delights in power, in strong excitement, as well as in truth, in good, -in right, whereas, pure reason and the moral sense approve only of the -true and good. I proceed to shew that this general love or tendency to -immediate excitement or theatrical effect, no matter how produced, gives -a bias to the imagination often inconsistent with the greatest good, -that in poetry it triumphs over principle, and bribes the passions to -make a sacrifice of common humanity. You say that it does not, that -there is no such original sin in poetry, that it makes no such sacrifice -or unworthy compromise between poetical effect and the still small voice -of reason. And how do you prove that there is no such principle giving a -bias to the imagination, and a false colouring to poetry? Why by asking -in reply to the instances where this principle operates, and where no -other can, with much modesty and simplicity—‘But are these the only -topics that afford delight in poetry, etc.’ No; but these objects do -afford delight in poetry, and they afford it in proportion to their -strong and often tragical effect, and not in proportion to the good -produced, or their desirableness in a moral point of view. ‘Do we read -with more pleasure of the ravages of a beast of prey, than of the -shepherd’s pipe upon the mountain?’ No; but we do read with pleasure of -the ravages of a beast of prey, and we do so on the principle I have -stated, namely, from the sense of power abstracted from the sense of -good; and it is the same principle that makes us read with admiration -and reconciles us in fact to the triumphant progress of the conquerors -and mighty hunters of mankind, who come to stop the shepherd’s pipe upon -the mountains, and sweep away his listening flock. Do you mean to deny -that there is anything imposing to the imagination in power, in -grandeur, in outward shew, in the accumulation of individual wealth and -luxury, at the expense of equal justice and the common weal? Do you deny -that there is anything in ‘the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious -war, that makes ambition virtue,’ in the eyes of admiring multitudes? Is -this a new theory of the Pleasures of the Imagination, which says that -the pleasures of the imagination do not take rise solely in the -calculations of the understanding? Is it a paradox of my making, that -‘one murder makes a villain, millions a hero!’ Or is it not true that -here, as in other cases, the enormity of the evil overpowers and makes a -convert of the imagination by its very magnitude? You contradict my -reasoning, because you know nothing of the question, and you think that -no one has a right to understand what you do not. My offence against -purity in the passage alluded to, ‘which contains the concentrated venom -of my malignity,’ is, that I have admitted that there are tyrants and -slaves abroad in the world; and you would hush the matter up, and -pretend that there is no such thing, in order that there may be nothing -else. Farther, I have explained the cause, the subtle sophistry of the -human mind, that tolerates and pampers the evil, in order to guard -against its approaches; you would conceal the cause in order to prevent -the cure, and to leave the proud flesh about the heart to harden and -ossify into one impenetrable mass of selfishness and hypocrisy, that we -may not ‘sympathise in the distresses of suffering virtue’ in any case, -in which they come in competition with the factitious wants and ‘imputed -weaknesses of the great.’ You ask ‘are we gratified by the cruelties of -Domitian or Nero?’ No, not we—they were too petty and cowardly to strike -the imagination at a distance; but the Roman Senate tolerated them, -addressed their perpetrators, exalted them into Gods, the Fathers of -their people; they had pimps and scribblers of all sorts in their pay, -their Senecas, etc. till a turbulent rabble thinking that there were no -injuries to society greater than the endurance of unlimited and wanton -oppression, put an end to the farce, and abated the nuisance as well as -they could. Had you and I lived in those times, we should have been what -we are now, I ‘a sour mal-content,’ and you ‘a sweet courtier.’ Your -reasoning is ill put together; it wants sincerity, it wants ingenuity. -To prove that I am wrong in saying that the love of power and heartless -submission to it extend beyond the tragic stage to real life, to prove -that there has been nothing heard but the shepherd’s pipe upon the -mountain, and that the still sad music of humanity has never filled up -the pauses to the thoughtful ear, you bring in illustration the -cruelties of Domitian and Nero, whom you suppose to have been without -flatterers, train-bearers, or executioners, and ‘the crimes of -revolutionary France of a still blacker die,’ (a sentence which alone -would have entitled you to a post of honour and secrecy under Sejanus,) -which you suppose to have been without aiders or abettors. You speak of -the horrors of Robespierre’s reign; (there you tread on velvet;) do you -mean that these atrocities excited nothing but horror in revolutionary -France, in undelivered France, in Paris, the centre and focus of anarchy -and crime; or that the enthusiasm and madness with which they were acted -and applauded, was owing to nothing but a long-deferred desire for truth -and justice, and the collected vengeance of the human race? You do not -mean this, for you never mean anything that has even an approximation to -unfashionable truth in it. You add, ‘We cannot recollect, however, that -these crimes were heard of with much satisfaction in this country.’ Then -you have forgotten the years 1793 and 94, you have forgotten the -addresses against republicans and levellers, you have forgotten Mr. -Burke and his 80,000 incorrigible Jacobins.—‘Nor had we the misfortune -to know any individual, (though we will not take upon us to deny that -Mr. Hazlitt may have been of that description,)’ (I will take upon me to -deny that) ‘who cried havoc, and enjoyed the atrocities of Robespierre -and Carnot.’ Then at that time, Sir, you had not the good fortune to -know Mr. Southey.[84] - -To return, you find fault with my toleration of those pleasant persons, -Lucio, Pompey, and Master Froth, in Measure for Measure, and with my use -of the word ‘natural morality.’ And yet, ‘the word is a good word, being -whereby a man may be accommodated.’ If Pompey was a common bawd, you, -Sir, are a court pimp. That is artificial morality. ‘Go to, a feather -turns the scale of your avoir-du-pois.’ I have also, it seems, erred in -using the term _moral_ in a way not familiar to you, as opposed to -_physical_; and in that sense have applied it to the description of the -mole on Imogen’s neck, ‘cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops i’ th’ -bottom of a cowslip.’ I have stated that there is more than a -physical—there is a moral beauty in this image, and I think so still, -though you may not comprehend how. - -You assert roundly that there is no such person as the black prince -Morocchius,[85] in the Merchant of Venice. ‘He, (Mr. Hazlitt,) objects -entirely to a personage of whom we never heard before, the black Prince -Marocchius. With this piece of blundering ignorance, _which, with_ a -thousand similar instances of his intimate acquaintance with the poet, -clearly _prove_ that his enthusiasm for Shakespear is all affected, we -conclude what we have to say of his folly; it remains to say a few words -of his mischief.’ Vol. xxxiv. p. 463. I could not at first, Sir, -comprehend your drift in this passage, and I can scarcely believe it -yet. But I perceive that in Chalmers’s edition, the tawny suitor of -Portia, who is called Morocchius in my common edition, goes by the style -and title of Morocco. This important discovery proves, according to you, -that my admiration of Shakespear is all affected, and that I can know -nothing of the poet or his characters. So that the only title to -admiration in Shakespear, not only in the Merchant of Venice, but in his -other plays, all knowledge of his beauties, or proof of an intimate -acquaintance with his genius, is confined to the alteration which Mr. -Chalmers has adopted in the termination of the two last syllables of the -name of this blackamoor, and his reading Morocco for Morocchius. -Admirable grammarian, excellent critic! I do not wonder you think -nothing of my Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, when I see what it is -that you really admire and think worth the study in them. No, no, Mr. -Gifford, you shall not persuade me by your broken English and -‘red-lattice phrases,’ that the only thing in Shakespear worth knowing, -was the baptismal name of this Prince of Morocco, or that no one can -admire the author’s plays out of Mr Chalmers’s edition, or find anything -to admire even there, except the new nomenclature of the _dramatis -personæ_. If this is not your meaning in the passage here quoted, I do -not know what it is; if it is not, I have done you great injustice in -supposing that it is, for I am sure it cannot mean anything else so -foolish and contemptible. You had begun this curious paragraph by -saying, that ‘I had run through my set of phrases, and was completely at -a stand’; and you bring as a damning proof of this, a repetition of two -phrases. Do you believe that I had filled 300 pages with the repetition -of two phrases? ‘Go, go, you’re a censorious ill man.’ - -The deliberate hypocrisy of Regan and Gonerill, of which I spoke, I had -explained in the sentence before by a periphrasis to mean their -‘hypocritical pretensions to virtue.’ If I had no right to use the word -hastily in this absolute sense, you had still less to confound the -meaning of a whole passage. Edmund is indeed ‘a hypocrite to his father; -he is a hypocrite to his brother, and to Regan and Gonerill’; but he is -not a hypocrite to himself. This is that consummation of hypocrisy of -which I spoke, and of which you ought to know something. - -I have commenced my observations on Lear, you say, with ‘an -acknowledgment remarkable for its _naiveté_ and its truth’; the import -of which remarkable acknowledgment is, that I find myself incompetent to -do justice to this tragedy, by any criticism upon it. This you construe -into a ‘determination on my part to write nonsense’; you seem, Sir, to -have sat down with a determination to write something worse than -nonsense. As a proof of my having fulfilled the promise, (which I had -_not_ made,) you cite these words, ‘It is then the best of all -Shakespear’s plays, for it is the one in which he was _most in -earnest_‘; and add significantly, ‘Macbeth and Othello were mere _jeux -d’esprit_, we presume.’ You may presume so, but not from what I have -said. You only aim at being a word-catcher, and fail even in that. In -like manner, you say, ‘If this means that we sympathise so much with the -feelings and sentiments of Hamlet, that we identify ourselves with the -character, we have to accuse Mr. Hazlitt of strangely misleading us a -few pages back. “The moral of _Othello_ comes directly home to the -business and bosoms of men; the interest in _Hamlet_ is more _remote_ -and reflex.” And yet it is we who are Hamlet.’—Yes, because we -sympathise with Hamlet, in the way I have explained, and which you ought -to have endeavoured at least to understand, as reflecting and moralising -on the general distresses of human life, and not as particularly -affected by those which come home to himself, as we see in Othello. You -accuse me of stringing words together without meaning, and it is you who -cannot connect two ideas together. - -You call me ‘a poor cankered creature,’ ‘a trader in sedition,’ ‘a -wicked sophist,’ and yet you would have it believed that I am -‘principally distinguished by an _indestructible_ love of flowers and -odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds and bright -skies, and woodland solitudes and moonlight bowers.’[86] I do not -understand how you reconcile such ‘welcome and unwelcome things,’ but -anything will do to feed your spleen at another’s expence, when it is -the person and not the thing you dislike. Thus you complain of my style, -that it is at times figurative, at times poetical, at times familiar, -not always the same flat dull thing that you would have it. You point -out the omission of a line in a quotation from a well-known passage in -Shakespear. You do not however think the detection of this omission is a -sufficient proof of your sagacity, but you proceed to assign as a motive -for it, ‘That I do it to improve the metre,’ which is ridiculous. You -say I conjure up objections to Shakespear which nobody ever thought of, -in order to answer them. The objection to Romeo and Juliet, which I have -answered, was made by the late Mr. Curran, as well as the objection to -the want of interest and action in Paradise Lost, which I have answered -in another place.—‘Thus he endeavours to convince one class of critics, -that the poet’s genius was not confined to the production of stage -effect by supernatural means. In another place he expresses his -astonishment that Shakespear should be considered as a gloomy writer, -who painted nothing but gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire.’ One of -these classes of critics which, you say, ‘are phantoms of my own -creating,’ comprehends the whole French nation, and the other the -greatest part of the English with Dr. Johnson at their head, who in his -Preface, ‘one of the most perfect pieces of criticism since the days of -Quintilian’ (and which might have been written in the days of Quintilian -just as well as in ours) has neglected to expatiate on Shakespear’s -‘_indestructible_ love of flowers and odours, and woodland solitudes and -moonlight bowers.’ You know nothing of Shakespear, nor of what is -thought about him: you mind only the text of the commentators. With -respect to Mr. Wordsworth’s Ode, which I have dragged into my account of -Romeo and Juliet, I did not quarrel with the poetical conceit, but with -the metaphysical doctrine founded upon it by his school. There is a -difference between ‘ends of verse and sayings of philosophers.’ If -Shakespear had been a great German transcendental philosopher (either at -the first or second hand) his talking of the music of the spheres might -have rendered him suspected. You compare my account of Hamlet to the -dashing style of a showman: I think the showman’s speech is proper to a -show, and mine to Hamlet. You, Sir, have no sympathy in common with -Hamlet; nothing to make him seem ever ‘present to your mind’s eye’; no -feeling to produce such an hallucination in your mind, nor to make you -tolerate it in others. You are an Ultra-Crepidarian critic. - -You laugh at my theory, that ‘Filch’s picking of pockets has ceased to -be so good a jest as formerly,’ from the degeneracy of the age, that is, -from the diminution of the practice, as at variance with the Police -Report. Shortly after I had hazarded this piece of conjectural -criticism, the Beggar’s Opera was hooted off the stage in -America—because they have no Police Report there. I may have been -premature in applying this conclusion from a highly advanced state of -civilization, or from the degeneracy of the age we live in, to our own -country. - -What you say of my remarks on the use which Shakespear makes of the -principal analogy in Cymbeline, and of contrast in Macbeth is beneath an -answer. You should confine yourself to mere matters of verbal criticism. -Thus you object to my use of the term ‘logical diagrams’ as -unprecedented and barbarous: yet we talk of syllogising in mode and -figure, and besides, the word has been made pretty malleable by Mr. -Burke. What do you say to his talking of ‘the geometricians and chemists -of France, bringing the one from the dry bones of their diagrams, and -the other from the soot of their furnaces, dispositions worse than -indifferent to common feelings and habitudes.’ Would you call this -‘slip-slop absurdity’? But to talk of _the dry bones of diagrams_, and -escape with impunity from the censure of small critics, a man must -assert that the king of this country ‘holds his crown in contempt of the -choice of the people.’ - -I am obliged to you for informing me of the real name of the person who -wrote the ingenious parallel between Richard the Third and Macbeth. - -The article in the last Review on my Lectures on English Poetry, -requires a very short notice.—You would gladly retract what you have -said, but you dare not. You are a coward to public opinion and to your -own. You begin by observing, ‘Mr. Hazlitt seems to have bound himself -like Hannibal to wage everlasting war, not indeed against Rome, but -against accurate reasoning, just observation, and precise, or even -intelligible language.’ This might be true, if the opinion of the -Quarterly Review were synonymous with accurate reasoning, just -observation, and knowledge of language. ‘We have traced him in his two -former predatory excursions on taste and common sense. Had he written on -any other subject, we should scarcely have thought of watching his -movements.’ You were ‘principally excited to notice’ the Round Table by -some political heresies which had crept into it: you ‘condescended to -notice’ the Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, ‘to shew how small a -portion of talent and literature was necessary to carry on the trade of -sedition.’ You have been tempted to watch my movements in the present -work to shew how little talent and literature is necessary to write a -popular work on poetry. ‘But though his book is dull, his theme is -pleasing, and interests in spite of the author. As we read, we forget -Mr. Hazlitt, to think of those concerning whom he writes.’ Do you think, -Sir, that a higher compliment could come from you? - -It would neither be for my credit nor your own, that I should follow you -in detail through your abortive attempts to deny me exactly those -qualifications which you feel conscious that I possess, or afraid that -others will ascribe to me. You are already bankrupt of your word, nor -can I be admitted as an evidence in my own case. You say that I am -utterly without originality, without a power of illustration, or -language to make myself understood!—I shall leave it to the public to -judge between us. There is one objection however which you make to me -which is singular enough: viz. that I quote Shakespear. I can only -answer, that ‘I would not change that vice for your best virtue.’ ‘If a -trifling thing is to be told, he will not mention it in common language: -he must give it, if possible, in words which the Bard of Avon has -_somewhere_ used. Were _the beauty of the applications conspicuous_, we -might forget or at least forgive, _the deformity_ produced _by the -constant stitching in of these patches_‘—[_i.e._ by the beauty of the -applications]. ‘Unfortunately, however, the phrases thus obtruded upon -us _seem_ to be selected, not on account of _any intrinsic beauty_, but -merely because they are _fantastic and unlike what would naturally occur -to an ordinary writer_.’ Certainly, Sir, your style is very different -from Shakespear’s. I observe in your notes to the Baviad and Mæviad, you -diversify your matter by frequently quoting Greek.—Now it appears to me -that these quotations of your’s add to the wit only by varying the type. -If these learned patches ‘plagued the Cruscas and Lauras,’ my quotations -have given other people ‘the horrors’! - -You quote my definition of poetry, and say that it is not a definition -of anything, because it is completely unintelligible. To prove this, you -take one word which occurs in it, and is no way important, the word -_sympathy_, which you tell us has two significations, one anatomical, -and the other moral; and poetry, according to you, ‘has no skill in -surgery or ethics.’ I do not think this shews a want of clearness in my -definition, but a want of good faith or understanding in you. - -You say that I get at a number of extravagant conclusions ‘by means -sufficiently simple and common. He employs the term poetry in three -distinct meanings, and his legerdemain consists in substituting one of -these for the other. Sometimes it is the general appellation of a -certain class of compositions, as when he says that poetry is graver -than history. Secondly, it denotes the talent by which these -compositions are produced; and it is in this sense that he calls poetry -that fine particle within us, which produces in our being rarefaction, -expansion, elevation and purification.’ [This is Mr. Gifford’s academic -style, not mine.] ‘Thirdly, it denotes the subjects of which these -compositions treat. It is in this meaning that he uses the term, when he -says that all that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it; -that fear is poetry, that hope is poetry, that love is poetry; and in -the very same sense he might assert that fear is sculpture and painting -and music; that the crimes of Verres are the eloquence of Cicero, and -the poetry of Milton the criticism of Mr. Hazlitt.’ It is true I have -used the word poetry in the three senses above imputed to me, and I have -done so, because the word has these three _distinct_ meanings in the -English language, that is, it signifies the composition produced, the -state of mind or faculty producing it, and, in certain cases, the -subject-matter proper to call forth that state of mind. Your objection -amounts to this, that in reasoning on a difficult question I write -common English, and this is the whole secret of my extravagance and -obscurity.—Do you mean that the distinguishing between the compositions -of poetry, the talent for poetry, or the subject-matter of poetry, would -have told us what _poetry_ is? This is what you would say, or you have -no meaning at all. I have expressly treated the subject according to -this very division, and I have endeavoured to define that common -something which belongs to these several views of it, and determines us -in the application of the same common name, viz. an unusual vividness in -external objects or in our immediate impressions, exciting a movement of -imagination in the mind, and leading by natural association or -_sympathy_ to harmony of sound and the modulation of verse in expressing -it. This is what you, Sir, cannot understand. I could not ‘assert in the -same sense that fear is sculpture and painting, etc.’ because this would -be an abuse of the English language: we talk of the _poetry of -painting_, etc. which could not be, if poetry was confined to the -technical sense of ‘lines in ten syllables.’ The crimes of Verres, I -also grant, were not the same thing as the eloquence of Cicero, though I -suspect you confound the crimes of revolutionary France with Mr. Pitt’s -speeches; and as to Milton’s poetry and my criticisms, there is almost -as much difference between them as between Milton’s poetry and your -verses. You say, ‘the principal subjects of which poetry treats, are the -passions and affections of mankind; we are all under the influence of -our passions and affections, that is, in Mr. Hazlitt’s new language, we -all act on the principles of poetry, and are in truth all poets. We all -exert our muscles and limbs, therefore we are anatomists and surgeons; -we have teeth which we employ in chewing, therefore we are dentists,’ -etc. Not at all; we are all poets, inasmuch as we are under the -influence of the passions and imagination, that is, as we have certain -common feelings, and undergo the same process of mind with the poet, who -only expresses in a particular manner what he and all feel alike; but in -exerting our muscles, we do not dissect them; in chewing with our teeth, -we do not perform the part of dentists, etc. There is nothing parallel -in the two cases. ‘You anticipate,’ you say, ‘these brilliant -conclusions for me’; and do not perceive the difference between the -extension of a logical principle, and an abuse of common language.—You -proceed, ‘As another specimen of his definitions, we may take the -following. “Poetry does not define the limits of sense, nor analyse the -distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the -imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or -feeling.” Poetry was at the beginning of the book asserted to be _an -impression_; it is now _the excess of the imagination beyond an -impression_; what this excess is we cannot tell, but at least it must be -something very unlike an impression.’ Poetry at the beginning of the -book was asserted to be not simply an impression, ‘but an impression _by -its vividness exciting an involuntary movement of the imagination_: now, -you say it is _the excess of the imagination beyond an impression_; and -you bring this as a proof of a contradiction in terms. An impression, by -its vividness exciting a movement of the imagination, you discover, must -be something very unlike an impression, and as to the imagination -itself, you cannot tell what it is; it is an unknown power in your -poetical creed. What is most extraordinary is, that you had quoted the -very passage which you here represent as a total contradiction to the -latter, only two pages before. What, Sir, do you think of your readers? -What must they think of you!—‘Though the _total want of meaning_,’ you -add, ‘is the weightiest objection to such writing, yet _the abuse_ which -it involves of _particular words and phrases_’ (in addition to a total -want of meaning) ‘is very remarkable,’ (it must be so,) ‘and will not be -overlooked by those who are aware of the inseparable connexion between -justness of thought and precision of language.’ (You are not aware that -there is no precise measure of thought or expression.) ‘What, in strict -reasoning, can be meant by the impression of a feeling?’ (The impression -which it makes on the mind, as distinct from some other to which it -gives birth, is what I meant.) ‘How can _actual_ and _ordinary_ be used -as synonymous?’ (They are not.) ‘Every impression must be an actual -impression’; (there is then no such thing as an imaginary impression;) -‘and the use of that epithet annihilates the limitations which Mr. -Hazlitt meant’ (in the total want of all meaning,) ‘to guard his -proposition.’ _We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us._ -You say, ‘you have not the faintest conception of what I mean by the -heavenly bodies returning on the squares of the distances or on Dr. -Chalmers’s Discourses.’ Nor will I tell you what I meant. _A knavish -speech sleeps in a fool’s ear._ ‘As to the assertion that there can -never be another Jacob’s dream, we see no reason why dreams should be -scientific.’ Shakespear says, that dreams ‘_denote a foregone -conclusion_.’ You quote what I say of Swift, and misrepresent it. ‘Mr. -Hazlitt’s doctrine, therefore, is, that the inability to become mad, is -very likely to drive a man mad.’ My doctrine is, that the inability to -get rid of a favourite idea, when constantly thwarted, or of the -impression of any object, however painful, merely because it is true, is -likely to drive a man mad. It is this tenaciousness on a particular -point that almost always destroys the general coherence of the -understanding. I do not say that the inability to get rid of the -distinction between right and wrong continued in Swift’s mind after he -was mad—I say it contributed to drive him mad. I mean that a sense of -great injustice often produces madness in individual cases, and that a -strong sense of general injustice, and an abstracted view of human -nature such as it is, compared with what it ought to be, is likely to -produce the same effect in a mind like that of the author of Gulliver’s -Travels. Do you understand yet? You do not go into my general character -of Swift, which might have drawn you into something of a wider field of -speculation; and you pick out a straggling sentence or two to cavil at -in my account of Pope, of Chaucer, of Milton, and Shakespear, on which -you are glad to discharge the gall that has been accumulating in your -mind for several pages. If you think by this means, to put me or the -public out of conceit with my writings, you have mistaken the matter -entirely. You can only put down my arguments by meeting them fairly, or -my style, by writing better than you do. - -‘We occasionally,’ you proceed, ‘discover a faint semblance of connected -thinking in Mr. Hazlitt’s pages; but wherever this is the case, his -reasoning is for the most part incorrect.’ This is a curious inference. -‘This faint semblance of connected thinking,’ is, it appears, when I -maintain some opinion, which is ‘a sprout from some popular doctrine’; -but if I push it a little farther than you were aware of, my reasoning -becomes incorrect. Thus it has been a popular doctrine with some -critics, (which yet you do not admit)—‘That the progress of science is -unfavourable to the culture of the imagination. It is no doubt true, -that the individual who devotes his labour to the investigation of -abstract truth, must acquire habits of thought very different from those -which the exercise of the fancy demands.’ You add in italics, ‘_the -cause lies in the exclusive appropriation of his time to reasoning, and -not in the logical accuracy with which he reasons_.’ Whenever I have any -discovery to communicate, which I think you cannot comprehend, I will in -future put it in italics, to make it equally profound and clear. It -appears by you, that the incompatibility between the successful pursuit -of different studies does not arise from anything incompatible in the -studies themselves, but from the time devoted to each. The mind is -equally incapacitated from passing from one to the other, whether they -are the most opposite or the most alike. The dreams of alchemy, and the -schemes of astrology, the traditional belief in the doctrine of ghosts -and fairies, though made up almost entirely of imagination, self-will, -superstition and romance, were not a jot more favourable to the caprices -and fanciful exaggerations of poetry, either in the public mind, or in -that of individuals, than the modern system which excludes (both by the -logical accuracy with which it proceeds, and a constant appeal to -demonstrable facts), every alloy of passion, and all exercise of the -imagination. You should never put your thoughts in italics. If I were to -attempt a character of verbal critics, I should be apt to say, that -their habits of mind disqualify them for general reasoning or fair -discussion: that they are furious about trifles, because they have -nothing else to interest them; that they have no way of giving dignity -to their insignificant discoveries, but by treating those who have -missed them with contempt; that they are dogmatical and conceited, in -proportion as they have little else to guide them in their quaint -researches but caprice and accident; that the want of intellectual -excitement gives birth to increasing personal irritability, and endless -petty altercation. You, Sir, would make all this self-evident, by the -help of italics, and say, that _the cause lies not in anything in the -nature of verbal criticism, but the exclusive appropriation of their -time to it_. - -You next run foul of my account of the pleasure derived from tragedy. -You are afraid to understand what I say on any subject, and it is not -therefore likely you should ever detect what is erroneous in it. I have -shewn by a reference to facts, and to the authority of Mr. Burke (whom -you would rather contradict than believe me) that the objects which are -supposed to please only in fiction, please in reality; that ‘if there -were known to be a public execution of some state criminal in the next -street, the theatre would soon be empty’—that therefore the pleasure -derived from tragedy is not anything peculiar to it, as poetry or -fiction; but has its ground in the common love of strong excitement. You -say, I have misstated the fact, to give a false view of the question, -which, according to you, is ‘why that which is painful in itself, -pleases in works of fiction.’ I answer, I have shewn that this is not a -fair statement of the question, by stating the fact, that what is -painful in itself, pleases not the sufferer indeed, but the spectator, -in reality as well as in works of fiction. The common proverb proves -it—‘What is sport to one, is death to another.’ - -You observe, that ‘Some lines I have quoted from Chaucer, are very -pleasing— - - ——“Emelie that fayrer was to sene - Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene, - And fresher than the May with floures newe: - For with the rose-colour strove hire hewe; - I n’ot which was the finer of hem too.” - -‘But surely the beauty does not lie in the last line, though it is with -this that Mr. Hazlitt is chiefly struck. “This scrupulousness” he -observes, “about the literal preference, as if some question of matter -of fact were at issue, is remarkable.”’ - -That is, I am not chiefly struck with the beauty of the last line, but -with its peculiarity as characteristic of Chaucer. The beauty of the -former lines might be in Spenser: the scrupulous exactness of the latter -could be found nowhere but in Chaucer. I had said just before, that this -poet ‘introduces a sentiment or a simile, as if it were given in upon -evidence.’ I bring this simile as an instance in point, and you say I -have not brought it to prove something else. - -You charge me with misrepresenting Longinus, and prove that I have not. -The word ἐναγώνιον signifies not as you are pleased to paraphrase it -‘vehemently energetic,’ but simply ‘full of contests.’ Must the Greek -language be new-fangled, to prove that I am ignorant of it? - -The only mistake you are able to point out, is a slip of the pen, which -you will find to have been corrected long ago in the second -edition.—Your pretending to say that Dr. Johnson was an admirer of -Milton’s blank verse, is not a slip of the pen—you know he was not. -There is as little sincerity in your concluding paragraph. You would -ascribe what little appearance of thought there is in my writings to a -confusion of images, and what appearance there is of imagination to a -gaudy phraseology. If I had neither words nor ideas, I should be a -profound philosopher and critic. How fond you are of reducing every one -else to your own standard of excellence! - -I have done what I promised. You complain of the difficulty of -remembering what I write; possibly this Letter will prove an exception. -There is a train of thought in your own mind, which will connect the -links together: and before you again undertake to run down a writer for -no other reason, than that he is of an opposite party to yourself, you -will perhaps recollect that your wilful artifices and shallow cunning, -though they pass undetected, will hardly screen you from your own -contempt, nor, when once exposed, will the gratitude of your employers -save you from public scorn. - -Your conduct to me is no new thing: it is part of a system which has -been regularly followed up for many years. Mr. Coleridge, in his -Literary Life, has the following passage to shew the treatment which he -and his friends received from your predecessor, the editor of the -Anti-Jacobin Review.—‘I subjoin part of a note from the Beauties of the -Anti-Jacobin, in which having previously informed the public that I had -been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism, at a time when for my -youthful ardour in defence of Christianity I was decried as a bigot by -the proselytes of French philosophy, the writer concludes with these -words—“_Since this time he has left his native country, commenced -citizen of the world, left his poor children fatherless, and his wife -destitute. Ex hoc disce his friends, Lamb and Southey._” With severest -truth,’ continues Mr. Coleridge, ‘it may be asserted that it would not -be easy to select two men more exemplary in their domestic affections -than those whose names were thus printed at full length, as in the same -rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive, who had left his -children fatherless, and his wife destitute! _Is it surprising that many -good men remained longer than perhaps they otherwise would have done, -adverse to a party which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of -such atrocious calumnies?_’ - -With me, I confess, the wonder does not lie there:—all I am surprised at -is, that the objects of these atrocious calumnies were ever reconciled -to the authors of them and their patrons. Doubtless, they had powerful -arts of conversion in their hands, who could with impunity and in -triumph take away by atrocious calumnies the characters of all who -disdained to be their tools; and rewarded with honours, places, and -pensions all those who were. It is in this manner, Sir, that some of my -old friends have become your new allies and associates.—They have -changed sides, not I; and the proof that I have been true to the -original ground of quarrel is, that I have you against me. Your -consistency is the undeniable pledge of their tergiversation. The -instinct of self-interest and meanness of servility are infallible and -safe; it is speculative enthusiasm and disinterested love of public -good, that being the highest strain of humanity, are apt to falter, and -‘dying, make a swan-like end.’ This tendency to change was, in the case -of our poetical reformists, precipitated by another cause. The spirit of -poetry is, as I believe, favourable to liberty and humanity, but not -when its aid is most wanted, in encountering the shocks and -disappointments of the world. Poetry may be described as having the -range of the universe; it traverses the empyrean, and looks down on -nature from a higher sphere. When it lights upon the earth, it loses -some of its dignity and its use. Its strength is in its wings; its -element is the air. Standing on its feet, jostling with the crowd, it is -liable to be overthrown, trampled on, and defaced; for its wings are of -a dazzling brightness, ‘sky-tinctured,’ and the least soil upon them -shews to disadvantage. Sullied, degraded as I have seen it, I shall not -here insult over it, but leave it to Time to take out the stains, seeing -it is a thing immortal as itself. ‘Being so majestical, I should do it -wrong to offer it but the shew of violence.’—The reason why I have not -changed my principles with some of the persons here alluded to, is, that -I had a natural inveteracy of understanding which did not bend to -fortune or circumstances. I was not a poet, but a metaphysician; and I -suspect that the conviction of an abstract principle is alone a match -for the prejudices of absolute power. The love of truth is the best -foundation for the love of liberty. In this sense, I might have -repeated— - - ‘Love is not love that alteration finds: - Oh! no, it is an everfixed mark, - That looks on tempests and is never shaken.’ - -Besides, I had another reason. I owed something to truth, for she had -done something for me. Early in life I had made (what I thought) a -metaphysical discovery; and after that, it was too late to think of -retracting. My pride forbad it: my understanding revolted at it. I could -not do better than go on as I had begun. I too, worshipped at no -unhallowed shrine, and served in no mean presence. I had laid my hand on -the ark, and could not turn back! I have been called ‘a writer of -third-rate books.’ For myself, there is no work of mine which I should -rate so high, except one, which I dare say you never heard of—An Essay -on the Principles of Human Action. I do not think the worse of it on -that account; nor though you might not be able to understand it, could -you attribute this to the gaudiness of the phraseology, nor the want of -thought. I will here, Sir, explain the nature of the argument as clearly -and in as few words as I can. - -The object of that Essay (and I have written this Letter partly to -introduce it through you to the notice of the reader) is to leave free -play to the social affections, and to the cultivation of the more -disinterested and generous principles of our nature, by removing a -stumbling-block which has been thrown in their way, and which turns the -very idea of virtue or humanity into a fable, viz. the metaphysical -doctrine of the innate and necessary selfishness of the human mind. Do -you understand so far? The question I propose to examine is not the -practical question, how far man is more or less selfish or social in the -actual sum-total of his habits and affections, nor the moral or -political question, to what degree of perfection he can be advanced -still further in the one, or weaned from the other; but my intention is -to state and answer the previous question, whether there is, as it has -been contended, a total incapacity and physical impossibility in the -human mind, of feeling an interest in anything beyond itself, so that -both the common feelings of compassion, natural affection, friendship, -etc. and the more refined and abstracted ones of the love of justice, of -country, or of kind, are, and must be a delusion, believed in only by -fools, and turned to their advantage by knaves. This doctrine which has -been sedulously and confidently maintained by the French and English -metaphysicians of the two last centuries, by Hobbes, Mandeville, -Rochefoucault, Helvetius and others, and is a principal corner-stone of -what is called the modern philosophy, I think tends to, and has done a -great deal of mischief, and I believe I have found out a view of the -subject, which gets rid of it unanswerably and for ever, in manner and -form following. I conceive, that to establish the doctrine of exclusive -and absolute selfishness on a metaphysical basis, that is to say, on the -original and impassable distinction of the faculties of the human mind, -it is necessary to make it appear, that there is some peculiar and -abstracted principle which gives it an immediate, mechanical, and -irresistible interest in whatever relates to itself, and which by the -same rule shuts out and is a bar to the very possibility of our feeling -not an equal, but any kind or degree of interest whatever, at any moment -of our lives, in the history and fate of others. This is so far from -being true, that the contrary is demonstrable. Thus, Sir, My -self-interest in anything signifies (by the statement) the particular -manner in which whatever relates to myself affects me, so as to create -an anxiety about it, and be a motive to action. Now the same word, -_self_, is indifferently applied to the whole of my being, past, -present, and to come; and it is supposed from the use of language and -the habitual association of ideas, that this self is _one thing_ as well -as one word, and my interest in it all along the same necessary, -identical interest. That a man must love himself as such, seems a -self-evident and simple proposition. The idea appears like an absolute -truth, and resists every attempt at analysis, like an element in nature. -Some persons, who formerly took the pains to read this work, imagined -(do not be alarmed, Sir!) that I wanted to argue them out of their own -existence, merely because I endeavoured to define the nature and meaning -of this word, self; to take in pieces, by metaphysical aid, this fine -illusion of the brain and forgery of language, and to shew what there is -real, and what false in it. The word denotes, by common consent, three -different selves, my past, my present, and my future self. Now it is -taken for granted by some, and insisted upon by others, that I must have -the same unavoidable interest in all these, because they are all equally -myself. But that is impossible; for in truth my personal identity is -founded only on my personal consciousness, and that does not extend -beyond the present moment.—It must be maintained, on the other side of -the question, that my past, my present, and my future self are -inseparably linked together, equally identified by an intimate communion -of transferable thoughts and feelings in one metaphysical principle of -self-interest, before they can be equally myself, the same identical -thing, to any purpose of sentiment or for any motive of action. It will -easily be seen how far this is the case, and how far it is not. I have a -peculiar, exclusive self-interest or sympathy (never mind the word, -Sir,) with my present self, by means of sensation (or consciousness), -and with my past self, by means of memory, which I have not, and cannot -have with the past or present feelings or interests of others; for this -reason that these faculties are exclusive, peculiar, and confined to -myself. But I have no exclusive, or peculiar, or independent faculty, -like sensation or memory, giving me the same absolute, unavoidable, -instinctive interest in my own future sensations, and none at all in -those of others. This ideal self is then nominally the same, but -strictly different; composed of distinct and unequal parts; bound -together by laws and principles which have no parity of relation to each -other. By shewing how personal identity produces self-interest as far as -it goes, we shall see exactly when and how it ceases.—If I touch a -burning coal, this gives me a present sensation differing in kind and -degree from any impression I can receive from the same sensation being -inflicted on another: there is no communication between another’s nerves -and my brain producing a correspondent jar and magnetic sympathy of -frame. Again, if I have suffered a pain of this sort in time past, this -leaves traces in my mind, by my continued identity with myself, or by -means of memory, of a kind totally distinct from any conception I can -form of the same pain inflicted a year ago (for instance) on another. -These two important faculties then give me an appropriate and exclusive -interest only in what happens or has happened to myself. So far as the -operation of these two faculties goes, I am strictly a selfish being, I -am necessarily cut off from all knowledge of or sympathy with the -feelings of any one but myself. But if I am to undergo a certain pain at -a future time, the next year or the next moment, however near or remote, -I have no faculty impressing this feeling intuitively and with -mechanical force and certainty on my mind beforehand, as my present or -past impressions are stamped upon it by means of sensation and memory. I -have no principle of thought or sentiment in the original conformation -of my mind, projecting me forward into my future being, giving me a -present unavoidable consciousness of it, and removed from all cognisance -of what happens to others; I have no faculty identifying my future -interests inseparably with my present feelings, and therefore I have no -exclusive, mechanical and proper self-interest in them, merely because -they are mine: for that which is _mine_, is that which touches me by -secret springs, and in a way in which what relates to others can take no -hold of me. The only faculty by which I can anticipate what is to befal -myself in future, is the same common and disposable faculty in kind and -in mode of operation, by which I can, I do, and must anticipate in -degree, and more or less according to circumstances, the feelings and -thoughts of others, and take a proportionable interest in them, viz. the -Imagination. To suppose that there is a principle of self-interest in -the mind, without a faculty of self-interest, is an absurdity and a -contradiction. This idea of an abstract, exclusive, metaphysical -self-interest in my own being generally, is taken (by a gross and blind -prejudice) from the manner in which the faculties of sensation and -memory affect me, and applied to a part of my being, where I have no -such interest in myself, because I have no such faculty giving it me. -What proves that there is no mechanical sympathy identifying my future -with my present being, is, that I am for the most part, indifferent to, -ignorant of what is to happen to myself hereafter. There is no -presentiment in the case. If the house is about to fall on my head, this -occasions no uneasiness to my self-love, unless there are circumstances -to alarm my imagination beforehand. To suppose, that besides the ideal -or rational interest I have in the event, I have another _real_ -metaphysical interest in it, without object or consciousness, is as if I -should say, that I have a particular interest in the past, without -remembering it, or in the present without feeling it.—But the future is -the only subject of action, that is, of a practical or rational interest -at all, either of self-love or benevolence. All voluntary action, that -is, all action undertaken with a view to produce a certain event or the -contrary, must relate to the future. The primary, essential motive of -the volition of anything must be the _idea_ of that thing, and the idea -solely. For the thing itself, which is the object of desire and pursuit, -is by the supposition a nonentity. It is _willed_ for that very reason, -that it is supposed not to exist. If it did exist, or had existed, it -would be absurd to will it to exist or not to exist; and as a thing -which does not exist, but which we will to be or not to be, it is a mere -fiction of the mind, and can exert no power over the thoughts, nor -influence the will or the affections in any way, except through the -imagination. The future, whether as it relates to myself or others, -exists only in the mind; and in the mind, not by memory, not by -sensation, which are exclusive and selfish faculties, but by the -imagination, which is not a limited, narrow faculty, but common, -discursive, and social. If my sympathy with others is not a sensible -substantial mechanical interest, neither is my self-interest anything -but an imaginary and ideal one, I am bound to my future interest only by -the same fine links of fancy and reason, which give that of others a -hold on my affections. As a voluntary agent, I am necessarily, and in -the first instance, that is, in the metaphysical sense of the question, -a disinterested one. I could not love myself, if I were not so formed, -as to be capable of loving others. I have no solid, material, gross, -actual self-interest in my own future welfare, and I therefore can only -have the same airy, notional, hypothetical interest in it, which I must -have in kind, though not in degree, in the pleasures and pains of -others, which I get at the knowledge of and sympathise with in the same -way. There is then no exclusive ground of self-interest, incompatible -with sympathy, and rendering it a chimera; self-love and sympathy both -rest on the same general ground of reason, of imagination, and of common -sense.—It may be said, that my own future interests have a reality -beyond the mere idea. So have the interests of others, and the only -question is, whether the sympathy, the motive to action, is not equally -imaginary in both cases. It may be said, that I shall become my future -self, but that is no reason why I should take a particular interest in -it till I do. If a pin pricks me in any part of my body, I am instantly -apprised of it, and feel an interest in removing it; but my future self -does not find any means of apprising me of its sensations, in which I -can feel no interest, except from previous apprehension. Lastly, it may -be said that I do feel an interest in myself and my future welfare, -which I do not, and cannot feel in that of others. This I grant; but -that does not prove a metaphysical antecedent self-interest, precluding -the possibility of all interest in others, (for the social affections -are as much a matter of fact, as the influence of self-love) but a -practical self-interest, arising out of habit and circumstances, and -more or less consistent with other disinterested and humane feelings, -according to habit, opinion, and circumstances. I love myself better -than my neighbour, for the same reason (and for no other) that I love my -child better than a stranger’s—from having my thoughts more fixed upon -its welfare, my time more taken up in providing for it, and from my -knowing better by experience, what its wants and wishes are. People have -accounted for natural affection as an innate idea, as they have for -self-love. According to the metaphysical doctrine of selfishness, my own -child or a stranger’s, and every one else, are equally and perfectly -indifferent to me, as much as if they were mere machines. As to a -paramount universal abstract notion of personal identity, impelling and -overruling all my actions, thoughts, feelings, etc. to one sole object, -and centre of self-interest, there is no such thing in nature. It -requires almost as much pains and discipline, to make us attentive to -our own real and permanent happiness, as to that of others. Is it not -the constant theme of moralists and divines, that man is the sport of -impulse, and the creature of habit? I would ask, whether the -convivialist is deterred from indulging in his love of the bottle, by -any consideration of the ruin of his health or business? Is the -debauchee restrained in the career of his passions, any more by -reflecting on the disgrace or probable diseases he is bringing on -himself, than on the injury he does to others? It would be as hard a -task to make the spendthrift prudent, as the miser generous. Man is -governed by his passions, and not by his interest.—The selfish theory is -founded on mixing up vulgar prejudices, and scholastic distinctions; and -by being insisted on, tends to debase the mind, and not at all promote -the cause of truth. - -I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by -anything I could add on the subject, as by relating the manner in which -it first struck me. I remember I had been reading a speech which -Mirabaud (the author of the work, called the System of Nature) has put -into the mouth of a supposed infidel at the day of Judgment; and was -afterwards led on by some means or other, to consider the question, -whether it could properly be said to be an act of virtue in any one to -sacrifice his own final happiness to that of any other person, or number -of persons, if it were possible for the one ever to be made the price of -the other. Suppose it be my own case—that it were in my power to save -twenty other persons, by voluntarily consenting to suffer for them, why -should I not do a generous thing, and never trouble myself about what -might be the consequences to myself thousands of years hence? Now the -reason, I thought, why a man should prefer his own future welfare to -that of others, was, that he has a necessary, or abstract interest in -the one, which he cannot have in the other, and this again is the -consequence of his being always the same individual, of his continued -identity with himself. The distinction is this, that however insensible -I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time -comes, I shall feel very differently about it. I shall then judge of it -from the actual impression of the object, that is, truly and certainly; -and as I shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall -bitterly repent my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational -agent, to be determined now by what I shall then wish I had done, when I -shall feel the consequences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It -is this continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an -immediate interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes -me at all times accountable to myself for my own conduct. As therefore -this consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again -at all—But stop——As I must be conscious of my past feelings to be -myself, and as this conscious being will be myself, how, if that -consciousness should be transferred to some other being? How am I to -know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity? But that -is impossible, because I shall have no other self than that which arises -from this very consciousness. Why then, if so, this self may be -multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to -endue with the same consciousness, which, if it can be renewed by an act -of omnipotence in any one instance, may clearly be so in a hundred -others. Am I to regard all these as equally myself? Am I equally -interested in the fate of all? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in -particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be -determined in my choice?——Here then I saw an end to my speculations -about absolute self-interest and personal identity. I saw plainly, that -the consciousness of my own feelings, which is made the foundation of my -continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and -might never be, that my identity with myself must be confined to the -connection between my past and present being, that with respect to my -future feelings and interests they could have no communication with, or -influence over my present feelings and interests, merely because they -were future, that I shall be hereafter affected by the recollection of -my former feelings and actions, and my remorse be equally heightened by -reflecting on my past folly, and late-earned wisdom, whether I am really -the same thinking being, or have only the same consciousness renewed in -me; but that to suppose that this remorse can re-act in the reverse -order on my present feelings, or create an immediate interest in my -future feelings before it exists, is an express contradiction. For, how -can this pretended unity of consciousness which is only reflected from -the past, which makes me so little acquainted with the future, that I -cannot even tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether it -will be entirely interrupted by, or renewed in me after death, and which -might be multiplied in I don’t know how many different beings, and -prolonged by complicated sufferings, without my being any the wiser for -it; how, I ask, can a principle of this sort transfuse my present into -my future being, and make me as much a participator in what does not at -all affect me as if it were actually impressed upon my senses? I cannot, -therefore, have a principle of active self-interest arising out of the -connexion between my future and present being, for no such connexion -exists or is possible. I am what I am in spite of the future. My -feelings, actions, and interests are determined by causes already -existing and acting, and cannot depend on anything else, without a -complete transposition of the order in which effects follow one another -in nature. - -In this manner, Sir, may a man learn to distinguish the limits which -circumscribe his identity with himself, and the frail tenure on which he -holds his fleeting existence. Here indeed, ‘on this bank and shoal of -time,’ we give ourselves credit for a few years, and so far make sure of -our continued identity—as far as we can see the horizon before us, while -the same busy scene exists, while the same objects, passions, and -pursuits engross our attention, we seem to grasp the realities of -things; they are incorporated with our imagination and take hold of our -affections, and we cannot doubt of our interest in them. Farther than -this, we do not go with the same confidence; the indistinctness of -another state of being takes away its reality, and we lose the abstract -idea of self for want of objects to attach it to. But the reasoning is -the same in both cases. The next year, the next hour, the next moment is -but a creation of the mind; in all that we hope or fear, love or hate, -in all that is nearest and dearest to us, we but mistake the strength of -illusion for certainty, and follow the mimic shews of things and catch -at a shadow and live in a waking dream. Everything before us exists in -an ideal world. The future is a blank and dreary void, like sleep or -death, till the imagination brooding over it with wings outspread, -impregnates it with life and motion. The forms and colours it assumes -are but the pictures reflected on the eye of fancy, the unreal mockeries -of future events. The solid fabric of time and nature moves on, but the -future always flies before it. The present moment stands on the brink of -nothing. We cannot pass the dread abyss, or make a broad and beaten way -over it, or construct a real interest in it, or identify ourselves with -what is not, or have a being, sense, and motion, where there are none. -Our interest in the future, our identity with it, cannot be substantial; -that self which we project before us into it is like a shadow in the -water, a bubble of the brain. In becoming the blind and servile drudges -of self-interest, we bow down before an idol of our own making, and are -spell-bound by a name. Those objects to which we are most attached, make -no part of our present sensations or real existence; they are fashioned -out of nothing, and rivetted to our self-love by the force of a -reasoning imagination, (the privilege of our intellectual nature)—and it -is the same faculty that carries us out of ourselves as well as beyond -the present moment, that pictures the thoughts, passions and feelings of -others to us, and interests us in them, that clothes the whole possible -world with a borrowed reality, that breathes into all other forms the -breath of life, and endows our sympathies with vital warmth, and -diffuses the soul of morality through all the relations and sentiments -of our social being. - -Such, Sir, is the metaphysical discovery of which I spoke; and which I -made many years ago. From that time I felt a certain weight and -tightness about my heart taken off, and cheerful and confident thoughts -springing up in the place of anxious fears and sad forebodings. The -plant I had sown and watered with my tears, grew under my eye; and the -air about it was wholesome and pleasant. For this cause it is, that I -have gone on little discomposed by other things, by good or adverse -fortune, by good or ill report, more hurt by public disappointments than -my own, and not thrown into the hot or cold fits of a tertian ague; as -the Edinburgh or Quarterly Review damps or raises the opinion of the -town in my favour. I have some love of fame, of the fame of a Pascal, a -Leibnitz, or a Berkeley (none at all of popularity) and would rather -that a single inquirer after truth should pronounce my name, after I am -dead, with the same feelings that I have thought of theirs, than be -puffed in all the newspapers, and praised in all the reviews, while I am -living. I myself have been a thinker; and I cannot but believe that -there are and will be others, like me. If the few and scattered sparks -of truth, which I have been at so much pains to collect, should still be -kept alive in the minds of such persons, and not entirely die with me, I -shall be satisfied. - - I am, Sir, - Yours, etc. - WILLIAM HAZLITT. - - - End of A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD. - ------ - -Footnote 72: - - See the Examiner, Feb. 9. - -Footnote 73: - - ‘I hated my profession’ (the business of a shoemaker, to which he was - bound prentice) ‘with a perfect hatred.’ See _Mr. Gifford’s Life of - Himself prefixed to his Juvenal_. He seems to have liked few things - else better from that day to this. He tells us in the same work - (though this is hardly what I should call being ‘a good hater’) that - he did not much like his father, and was not sorry when he died. This - candid and amiable personage always overflowed with ‘the milk of human - kindness.’ - -Footnote 74: - - ‘Undoubtedly the translator of Juvenal.’ - -Footnote 75: - - ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for - a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Mr. Gifford here seems to - exclude his band of gentlemen-pensioners, whom he pays on earth, from - bursting with obscure worth into the realms of day. It is thus that - Jacobin sentiments sprout from the commonest sympathy, and are even - unavoidable in a government critic, when the common claims of humanity - touch his pity or his self-love. - -Footnote 76: - - A quotation of Mr. Gifford’s from Shakespeare. Yet he reproaches me - with quoting from Shakespeare. - -Footnote 77: - - To Apollo. - -Footnote 78: - - Humanity stands as little in this author’s way as truth when his - object is to please. It was in the same spirit of unmanly adulation - that he struck at Mrs. Robinson’s lameness and ‘her crutches,’ with a - hand, that ought to have been withered in the attempt by the lightning - of public indignation and universal scorn. Mr. Sheridan once spoke of - certain politicians in his day who ‘skulked behind the throne, and - made use of the sceptre as a conductor to carry off the lightning of - national indignation which threatened to consume them.’ There are - certain small critics and poetasters who have always been trying to do - the same thing. - -Footnote 79: - - This word is not very choice English: the character is not English. - -Footnote 80: - - See the Mæviad, l. 365, etc.:— - - ‘I too, whose voice no claims _but truth’s e’er mov’d_, - Who long have seen thy merits, long have lov’d; - Yet lov’d in silence, lest the rout should say, - Too partial friendship tun’d the applausive lay; - Now, now, that all conspire thy name to raise, - May join the shout of unsuspected praise.’ - -Footnote 81: - - ‘To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten - thousand.’—SHAKSPEARE. - -Footnote 82: - - This character, (which has not been relished,) appeared originally in - a small pamphlet in 1806, called Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, with - a note acknowledging my obligations for the leading ideas to an - article of Mr. Coleridge’s, in the Morning Post, Feb. 1800. - -Footnote 83: - - This extreme tenderness, it is to be observed, is felt by a person who - in his Life of Ben Jonson, hopes that God will forgive Shakspeare for - having written his plays! - -Footnote 84: - - It was a phrase, (I have understood,) common in this gentleman’s - mouth, that Robespierre, by destroying the lives of thousands, saved - the lives of millions. Or, as Mr. Wordsworth has lately expressed the - same thought with a different application, ‘Carnage is the daughter of - humanity.’ - -Footnote 85: - - You have spelt it wrong (Marocchius), on purpose for what I know. - -Footnote 86: - - Quoted from the _Edinburgh Review_, No. 56. - - - - - NOTES - - - THE ROUND TABLE - - - ON THE LOVE OF LIFE - -This essay formed No. 3 of the Round Table series, the first two having -been contributed by Leigh Hunt. To numbers 2, 3, 4 the following motto -was prefixed: ‘Sociali fœdere mensa. _Milton._ A Table in a social -compact joined.’ - - PAGE - - 1. _That sage._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to Bacon’s lines— - - ‘What then remains, but that we still should cry - For being born, or being born, to die?’ - - which are taken from an epigram in the Greek Anthology. - - 2. ‘_The school-boy_,’ says _Addison._ See _The Spectator_, No. 93. - - ‘_Hope and fantastic expectations_,’ _etc._ Jeremy Taylor’s _Holy - Dying_, Chap. i. § 3, par. 4. - - ‘_An ounce of sweet_,’ _etc._ ‘A dram of sweete is worth a pound - of sowre.’ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. Canto iii. 30. This - line formed the motto of Leigh Hunt’s _Indicator_. - - 3. ‘_And that must end us_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 145–151. In - _The Examiner_ Hazlitt publishes the following passage as a - note to this quotation: ‘Many persons have wondered how - Bonaparte was able to survive the shock of that tremendous - height of power from which he fell. But it was that very height - which still rivetted his backward gaze, and made it impossible - for him to take his eye from it, more than from a hideous - spectre. The sun of Austerlitz still rose upon his imagination, - and could not set. The huge fabric of glory which he had - raised, still “mocked his eyes with air.”[87] He who had felt - his existence so intensely could not consent to lose it!’ - - 4. ‘_Are made desperate_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, Book VI. - The following note is appended to this essay in _The Examiner_: - ‘It is proper to notice that an extract from this article - formerly appeared in another publication. A series of - Criticisms on the principal English Poets will shortly be - commenced, and till concluded, will appear alternately with the - other subjects of the Round Table.’ The publication referred to - was _The Morning Chronicle_ for September 4, 1813, where, under - the heading ‘Common Places,’ the substance of the paragraph - beginning ‘The love of life is, in general, the effect,’ and - the following paragraph will be found. The plan for criticisms - of the English Poets was not adhered to. Hazlitt shortly - afterwards (1818) delivered a course of Lectures on the English - Poets which was published in the same year. - - - ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION - -This essay formed the greater part of No. 7 of the Round Table series. -The first three paragraphs are from one of Hazlitt’s ‘Common Places’ in -_The Morning Chronicle_, September 25, 1813. - - PAGE - - 4. ‘_A discipline of humanity._’ Bacon’s _Essays_, Of Marriage and - Single Life. - - ‘_Still green with bays_,’ _etc._ Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_, - 181–188. - - 5. _A celebrated political writer._ Probably Cobbett, of whom - Hazlitt says in another place: ‘He is a self-taught man, and - has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons - in their most striking and glaring excess.’ (_Table Talk_, - Character of Cobbett.) - - 6. ‘_The world is too much with us_,’ _etc._ Misquoted from - Wordsworth’s Sonnet. - - _Falstaff’s reasoning about honour._ See _1 Henry IV._ Act V. - Scene 1. - - ‘_They that are whole_,’ _etc._ _St. Matthew_, ix. 12. - - In _The Examiner_ this essay concluded with the following - passage: ‘We do not think a classical education proper for - women. It may pervert their minds, but it cannot elevate them. - It has been asked, Why a woman should not learn the dead - languages as well as the modern ones? For this plain reason, - that the one are still spoken, and have immediate associations - connected with them, and the other not. A woman may have a - lover who is a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a Spaniard; and it - is well to be provided against every contingency in that way. - But what possible interest can she feel in those old-fashioned - persons, the Greeks and Romans, or in what was done two - thousand years ago? A modern widow would doubtless prefer - Signor Tramezzani[88] to Æneas, and Mr. Conway would be a - formidable rival to Paris. No young lady in our days, in - conceiving an idea of Apollo, can go a step beyond the image of - her favourite poet: nor do we wonder that our old friend, the - Prince Regent, passes for a perfect Adonis in the circles of - beauty and fashion. Women in general have no ideas, except - personal ones. They are mere egotists. They have no passion for - truth, nor any love of what is purely ideal. They hate to - think, and they hate every one who seems to think of anything - but themselves. Everything is to them a perfect nonentity which - does not touch their senses, their vanity, or their interest. - Their poetry, their criticism, their politics, their morality, - and their divinity, are downright affectation. That line in - Milton is very striking— - - “He for God only, she for God in him.”[89] - - Such is the order of nature and providence; and we should be - sorry to see any fantastic improvements on it. Women are what - they were meant to be; and we wish for no alteration in - their bodies or their minds. They are the creatures of - the circumstances in which they are placed, of sense, of - sympathy and habit. They are exquisitely susceptible of the - passive impressions of things: but to form an idea of pure - understanding or imagination, to feel an interest in _the true_ - and _the good_ beyond themselves, requires an effort of which - they are incapable. They want principle, except that which - consists in an adherence to established custom; and this is the - reason of the severe laws which have been set up as a barrier - against every infringement of decorum and propriety in women. - It has been observed by an ingenious writer of the present day, - that women want imagination. This requires explanation. They - have less of that imagination which depends on intensity of - passion, on the accumulation of ideas and feelings round one - object, on bringing all nature and all art to bear on a - particular purpose, on continuity and comprehension of mind; - but for the same reason, they have more fancy, that is greater - flexibility of mind, and can more readily vary and separate - their ideas at pleasure. The reason of that greater presence of - mind which has been remarked in women is, that they are less in - the habit of speculating on what is best to be done, and the - first suggestion is decisive. The writer of this article - confesses that he never met with any woman who could reason, - and with but one reasonable woman. There is no instance of a - woman having been a great mathematician or metaphysician or - poet or painter: but they can dance and sing and act and write - novels and fall in love, which last quality alone makes more - than angels of them. Women are no judges of the characters of - men, except _as men_. They have no real respect for men, or - they never respect them for those qualities, for which they are - respected by men. They in fact regard all such qualities as - interfering with their own pretensions, and creating a - jurisdiction different from their own. Women naturally wish to - have their favourites all to themselves, and flatter their - weaknesses to make them more dependent on their own good - opinion, which, they think, is all that they want. We have, - indeed, seen instances of men, equally respectable and amiable, - equally admired by the women and esteemed by the men, but who - have been ruined by an excess of virtues and accomplishments.’ - Leigh Hunt replied to these remarks in the following number of - the Round Table series (February 19, 1815), where he makes - interesting reference to Hazlitt’s appearance and powers. - - - ON THE TATLER - -This essay formed No. 10 of the Round Table series. The substance of it -was repeated by Hazlitt in his volume of _Lectures on the English Comic -Writers_ (1819). (See the Lecture on ‘The Periodical Essayists.’) - - PAGE - - 7. ‘_The disastrous strokes which his youth suffered._’ ‘Some - distressful stroke that my youth suffered.’ _Othello_, Act I. - Scene 3. - - _He dwells with a secret satisfaction._ _The Tatler_, No. 107. - - _The club at the ‘Trumpet.’_ _The Tatler_, No. 132. - - _The cavalcade of the justice_, _etc._ _The Tatler_, No. 86. - - _The upholsterer and his companions._ See _The Tatler_, Nos. 155, - 160, and 178. - - _A burlesque copy of verses._ _The Tatler_, No. 238. The verses - are by Swift. - - 8. _Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield._ See p. 157. Betterton is - frequently mentioned in _The Tatler_. See especially No. 167. - - _Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock._ See _The Tatler_, No. 88, and - p. 157 of this volume. - - ‘_The first sprightly runnings._’ Dryden’s _Aurengzebe_, Act IV. - Scene 1. - - 9. _The Court of Honour._ Addison, in _The Tatler_, No. 250, created - the Court of Honour. He and Steele together wrote the later - papers (Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265) in which the proceedings - of the Court are recorded. - - _The Personification of Musical Instruments._ _The Spectator_, - Nos. 153 and 157. - - Note. This note is by Leigh Hunt. The authorship of the anonymous - paper (_The Spectator_, No. 95) is uncertain. - - _The account of the two sisters._ _The Tatler_, No. 151. - - _The married lady._ _The Tatler_, No. 104. - - 9. _The lover and his mistress._ _The Tatler_, No. 94. - - _The bridegroom._ _The Tatler_, No. 82. - - _Mr. Eustace and his wife._ _The Tatler_, No. 172. - - _The fine dream._ _The Tatler_, No. 117. - - _Mandeville’s sarcasm._ Bernard Mandeville (_d._ 1733), author of - _The Fable of the Bees_. - - _Westminster Abbey._ _The Spectator_, No. 26. - - _Royal Exchange._ _The Spectator_, No. 69. - - _The best criticism._ _The Spectator_, No. 226. - - 10. Note. _An original copy of the ‘Tatler.’_ The octavo edition of - 1710–11. - - - ON MODERN COMEDY - -This essay did not form one of the Round Table series, but was published -in _The Examiner_ for August 20, 1815, under the heading ‘Theatrical -Examiner.’ It was substantially repeated in the _Lectures on the English -Comic Writers_ (Lecture VIII., ‘on the Comic Writers of the Last -Century’), and was republished _verbatim_ in the posthumous volume -entitled _Criticisms and Dramatic Essays on the English Stage_ (1851). -The essay is practically a reprint of the first of two letters which -Hazlitt wrote to _The Morning Chronicle_ (September 25 and October 15, -1813). The second of these letters has not been republished. - - PAGE - - 10. ‘_Where it must live, or have no life at all._’ _Othello_, Act. - II. Scene 4. - - 11. ‘_See ourselves as others see us._’ Burns, ‘To a Louse.’ - - _Wart._ He means Shadow. See _2 Henry IV._, Act III. Scene 2. - - 12. _Lovelace_, _etc._ Nearly all these characters are discussed in - the _English Comic Writers_. Sparkish is in Wycherley’s - _Country Wife_, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s _Relapse_, - Millamant in Congreve’s _Way of the World_, Sir Sampson Legend - in Congreve’s _Love for Love_. - - _We cannot expect_, _etc._ This paragraph appeared originally in - _The Morning Chronicle_, October 15, 1813. - - 13. ‘_That sevenfold fence._’ ‘The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot - keep the battery from my heart.’ _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act - IV. Scene 14. This passage is taken by Hazlitt from his own - _Reply to Malthus_ (1807). - - ‘_Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man._’ Foote’s _Minor_, Act II. - - _Aristotle._ In the _Poetics_. - - ‘_Warm hearts of flesh and blood_,’ _etc._ Quoted, with omissions - and variations, from a passage in Burke’s _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 101). - - 14. ‘_Men’s minds are parcel of their fortunes._’ _Antony and - Cleopatra_, Act III. Scene 13. - - - ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO - -Republished with a few variations from _The Examiner_ of July 24, 1814. -Hazlitt afterwards published the original article in _A View of the -English Stage_ (1818), and borrowed from it in _Characters of -Shakespear’s Plays_ (See _ante_, pp. 206–7). - - PAGE - - 14. _A contemporary critic._ This was Hazlitt himself who made this - criticism of Kean in an article in _The Morning Chronicle_ (May - 9, 1814), reprinted in _A View of the English Stage_. - - ‘_Hedged in with the divinity of kings._’ From _Hamlet_, Act IV. - Scene 5. - - 15. _Play the dog_, _etc._ _3 Henry VI._, Act V. Scene 6. - - 16. ‘_His cue is villainous melancholy_,’ _etc._ _King Lear_, Act I. - Scene 2. - - - ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY - -This essay was one of a series called Common-places (No. III.) and -appeared in _The Examiner_ on November 27, 1814, before the Round Table -series commenced. It was not, therefore, addressed, as it purports to -be, ‘to the editor of the “Round Table.”’ The greater part of it was -repeated in the _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818) at the end of -Lecture V. on Thomson and Cowper. - - PAGE - - 17. _Rousseau in his ‘Confessions.’_ Partie I. Livre III. - - 18. _The minstrel._ See Beattie’s _Minstrel_, Book I. st. 9. - - 20. ‘_A farewell sweet._’ - - ‘If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, - Extend his evening beam,’ etc. - - _Paradise Lost_, II. 492. - - ‘_To me the meanest flower_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s Ode, - _Intimations of Immortality_. - - ‘_Nature did ne’er betray_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s _Lines composed - a few miles above Tintern Abbey_. - - 21. ‘_Or from the mountain’s sides._’ Collins’s _Ode to Evening_, - stanzas 9 and 10. - - - ON POSTHUMOUS FAME - -This essay is not one of the Round Table series. It appeared in _The -Examiner_ on May 22, 1814. - - PAGE - - 22. ‘_Blessings be with them_’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s _Personal Talk_, - stanza 4. - - ‘_Nor sometimes forget_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 33 _et - seq._ - - Note. A part of the passage here referred to (from _The Reason of - Church Government urged against Prelacy_) is quoted by Hazlitt - in his _Lectures on the English Poets_ (on Shakspeare and - Milton). - - 23. ‘_Famous poets’ wit._’ See _The Faerie Queene, Verses addressed - by the author_, No. 2. ‘_Have not the poems of Homer_,’ _etc._ - _The Advancement of Learning_, First Book, VIII. 6. - - ‘_Because on Earth_,’ _etc._ See Dante’s _Inferno_, Canto iv. Cf. - ‘On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’ _The Faerie - Queene_, Book IV. Canto ii. st. 32. - - ‘_Every variety of untried being._’ - - ‘Through what variety of untried being, - Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!’ - - Addison’s _Cato_, Act V. Scene 1. - - 24. Note. ‘_Oh! for my sake_,’ _etc._ Sonnet No. III. ‘_Desiring this - man’s art_,’ _etc._ Sonnet No. 29. - - - ON HOGARTH’S ‘MARRIAGE À LA MODE’ - -This essay (from _The Examiner_, June 5, 1814) and the next one (June -19, 1814) continuing the same subject, were (in substance) republished -in the _English Comic Writers_ (see the Lecture VII. on the works of -Hogarth) and also in _Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in -England_, _etc._ (1824). - - PAGE - - 25. _The late collection._ In 1814. - - ‘_Of amber-lidded snuff-box._’ Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_, IV. - 123. - - 26. ‘_A person, and a smooth dispose_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. - Scene 3. - - ‘_Vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness._’ Burke’s - _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. - Payne, ii. 89). - - - THE SUBJECT CONTINUED - - 28. _What Fielding says._ See _Tom Jones_, Book IV. Chap. i. - - 30. ‘_All the mutually reflected charities._’ Burke’s _Reflections on - the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 40). - - ‘_Frequent and full_,’ _etc._ See _Paradise Lost_, III. 795–797. - - 31. Note. _The ‘Reflector.’_ For 1811. The essay is included in - _Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays of Charles Lamb_ (ed. - Ainger). - - - ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS - -No. 15 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 31. ‘_At last he rose_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, 192–193. - - _Dr. Johnson._ See his Life of Milton (_Works_, Oxford ed., vii. - 119). - - ‘_Most musical, most melancholy._’ _Il Penseroso_, l. 62. - - ‘_With eager thought warbling his Doric lay._’ _Lycidas_, l. 189. - - 32. ‘_Together both_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, ll. 25 _et seq._ - - ‘_Oh fountain Arethuse_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, ll. 85 _et seq._ - - 33. ‘_Like one that had been led astray_,’ _etc._ _Il Penseroso_, ll. - 69–70. - - ‘_Next Camus_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, ll. 103 _et seq._ - - _Has been found fault with._ By Dr. Johnson in his Life of Milton - (_Works_, Oxford ed., vii. 120). - - _Camoens, who, in his ‘Lusiad.’_ See _The Lusiads_, Canto ii. - stanzas 56 _et seq._ - - 34. ‘_The muses in a ring_,’ _etc._ _Il Penseroso_, ll. 47–48. - - ‘_Have sight of Proteus_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world - is too much with us.’ - - ‘_Return, Alphaeus_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, ll. 132 _et seq._ - - 35. _Dr. Johnson._ Johnson does not seem to have been offended by the - dolphins in particular. - - _The picture by Barry._ ‘The triumph of the Thames,’ number 4 of - the six pictures painted by James Barry (1741–1806) for the - Society of Arts. Johnson’s friend, Dr. Charles Burney - (1726–1814) figures as one of the renowned dead. - - ‘_Here’s flowers for you_’ _etc._ _Winter’s Tale_, Act. IV. Scene - 4. - - 36. _Dr. Johnson’s ‘general remark_,’ _etc._ See his Life of Milton - (_Works_, Oxford ed., vii. 119, 131), and Boswell’s _Life of - Johnson_ (ed. G. B. Hill), iv. 305. - - - ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION - -No. 16 of the Round Table series. Hazlitt drew largely on this essay for -his lecture on Shakspeare and Milton. See _Lectures on the English -Poets_. - - PAGE - - 37. ‘_Makes Ossa like a wart._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1. - - ‘_Sad task, yet argument_,’ _etc._ Quoted, with omissions, from - _Paradise Lost_, IX. 13–45. - - 37. ‘_Him followed Rimmon_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 467–469. - - ‘_As when a vulture_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 431–439. - - 38. _It has been said_, _etc._ Hazlitt probably refers to Coleridge. - See his _Lectures on Shakspeare_ (Bell’s ed., p. 526). - - ‘_He soon saw within ken_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 621–634. - - 39. _Dr. Johnson._ Hazlitt somewhat exaggerates Johnson’s strictures - on Milton. See _The Rambler_, Nos. 86, 88, and 90. - - ‘_His hand was known_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 732–747. - - ‘_But chief the spacious hall_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. - 762–788. In _The Examiner_ Hazlitt has a note to the words - ‘brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings,’ pointing out that it - was one of Dr. Johnson’s speculations, that all imitative sound - is merely fanciful. He refers probably to _The Rambler_, No. - 94. - - 40. ‘_Round he surveys_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 555–567. - - ‘_In many a winding bout_,’ _etc._ _L’Allegro_, ll. 139–140. - - 41. ‘_The hidden soul of harmony._’ _L’Allegro_, l. 144. - - Note. Hazlitt quoted these couplets again in his _Lectures on the - English Poets_. See Lecture IV. on Dryden and Pope. - - - ON MANNER - -This essay is compounded of two papers in the Round Table series, Nos. -17 and 18.| Hazlitt, however, omitted the greater part of No. 18, at the -beginning of which he discussed Dryden’s version of _The Flower and the -Leaf_. No. 18 was published in _Winterslow_ (1839) under the title of -_Matter and Manner_. - - PAGE - - 42. _Says Lord Chesterfield._ ‘Observe the looks and countenances of - those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the - truth than what they say.’ _Letters to his Son_, No. cxxx. - - _Than his sentiments._ In _The Examiner_ appears the following - note on this passage: ‘We find persons who write what may be - called an _impracticable_ style; and their ideas are just as - impracticable. They have as little tact of what is going on in - the world as of the habitual meaning of words. Other writers - betray their natural disposition by affectation, dryness, or - levity of style. Style is the adaptation of words to things. - Dr. Johnson had no style, that is, no scale of words answering - to the differences of his subject. He always translated his - ideas into the highest and most imposing form of expression, or - more properly, into Latin words with English terminations. - Goldsmith said to him, “If you had to write a fable, and to - introduce little fishes speaking, you would make them talk like - great whales.” It is a satire on this kind of taste that the - most ignorant pretenders are in general what is generally - understood by the finest writers. Women generally write a good - style, because they express themselves according to the - impression which things make upon them, without the affectation - of authorship. They have besides more sense of propriety than - men.’ For the story of Goldsmith see Boswell’s _Life of - Johnson_ (ed. G. B. Hill), ii. 231. - - 43. _One of the most pleasant_, _etc._ It is evident from a passage - in _Table Talk_ (on Coffee-House Politicians) that this friend - is Leigh Hunt, and that ‘another friend’ is Lamb. - - ‘_As dry as the remainder biscuit_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act - II. Scene 7. - - ‘_Learning is often_,’ _etc._ _2 Henry IV._, Act IV. Scene 3. - - 44. _Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough._ - _Letters to his Son_, No. clxviii. - - 45. Note 1. It appears from a MS. note in a copy of the 1817 edition - that Hazlitt here refers to Lord Castlereagh. - - _The greatest man_, _etc._ Napoleon. Cf. _Table Talk_ (on Great - and Little Things) and _Life of Napoleon_, Chap. lvii. - - Note 2. _A sonnet to the King._ This must be the sonnet - beginning— - - ‘Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright’ - - to which Hazlitt referred again in _Political Essays_ - (‘Illustrations of _The Times_ Newspaper’). Wordsworth’s attack - on a set of gipsies was in the poem entitled ‘Gipsies’ (1807). - - ‘_In a wise passiveness._’ _Expostulation and Reply_ (1798). - - _In the ‘Excursion’._ Book VIII. - - _‘They are a grotesque ornament,’ etc._ ‘Nobility is a graceful - ornament to the civil order.’ Burke’s _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 164). - - _This is enough._ In _The Examiner_ Hazlitt adds: ‘We really have - a very great contempt for any one who differs from us on this - point.’ - - 46. _The Story of the glass-man._ The Barber’s story of his Fifth - Brother. - - _That manner is everything._ ‘Sheer impudence answers almost the - same purpose. “Those impenetrable whiskers have confronted - flames.” Many persons, by looking big and talking loud, make - their way through the world without any one good quality. We - have here said nothing of mere personal qualifications, which - are another set-off against sterling merit. Fielding was of - opinion that “the more solid pretensions of virtue and - understanding vanish before perfect beauty.” “A certain lady of - a manor” (says _Don Quixote_[90] in defence of his attachment - to _Dulcinea_, which however was quite of the Platonic kind), - “had cast the eyes of affection on a certain squat, brawny - lay-brother of a neighbouring monastery, to whom she was lavish - of her favours. The head of the order remonstrated with her on - this preference shown to one whom he represented as a very low, - ignorant fellow, and set forth the superior pretensions of - himself, and his more learned brethren. The lady having heard - him to an end made answer: All that you have said may be very - true; but know, that in those points which I admire, Brother - Chrysostom is as great a philosopher, nay greater than - Aristotle himself!” So the _Wife of Bath_:[91]— - - “To church was mine husband borne on the morrow - With neighbours that for him maden sorrow, - And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho: - As help me God, when that I saw him go - After the bier, methought he had a pair - Of legs and feet, so clean and fair, - That all my heart I gave unto his hold.” - - “All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not - honesty to have it thus set down.”’[92]—Note by Hazlitt in _The - Examiner_, September 3, 1815. - - Note. _Sir Roger de Coverley._ _The Spectator_, No. 130. - - 47. _The successful experiment._ See _Peregrine Pickle_, Chap, - lxxxvii. - - - ON THE TENDENCY OF SECTS - -No. 19 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 49. Note 1. The _Freedom of the Will_ of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) - was published in 1754. Edwards was, of course, an American, as - Flower reminded Hazlitt in his letter referred to below (49, - note 2). - - ‘_Hid from ages._’ _Colossians_, i. 26. - - Note 2. Benjamin Flower, in a reply which he wrote to this essay - (_The Examiner_, October 8, 1815), pointed out the ‘phenomenon’ - of a Quaker poet ‘appeared about thirty years since, Mr. Scott - of Amwell, whose volume of poetry obtained the marked - approbation of our acknowledged best critics.’ Johnson said of - John Scott of Amwell’s (1730–1783) _Elegies_, ‘they are very - well; but such as twenty people might write’ (Boswell’s _Life - of Johnson_, ed. G. B. Hill, ii. 351). Another correspondent, - signing himself ‘B. B.,’ wrote a letter to _The Examiner_ - (September 24, 1815), protesting against Hazlitt’s sketch of - Quakerism. This was no doubt Bernard Barton (1784–1849), - another Quaker poet, and afterwards the friend of Lamb. - - 50. ‘_There is some soul of goodness_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._, Act IV. - Scene 1. - - ‘_Evil communications_,’ _etc._ _1 Corinthians_, xv. 33. - - - ON JOHN BUNCLE - -No. 20 of the Round Table series. - -_The Life of John Buncle, Esq._, by Thomas (not John) Amory -(1691?-1788), was published in two volumes, 1756–1766. A new edition in -three volumes was published in 1825, very likely on Hazlitt’s -recommendation. See _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, ii. 198. A quotation -from the present essay faces the title-page of the new edition (vol. -i.). A volume containing the most readable parts of the book, and -happily entitled ‘The Spirit of Buncle,’ was published in 1823. The book -was a great favourite of Lamb’s as well as of Hazlitt’s. - - PAGE - - 52. _Botargos._ ‘Hard roes of mullet called botargos.’ Urquhart’s - Rabelais, I. xxi. - - 53. ‘_Man was made to mourn._’ - - ‘Who breathes, must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn.’ - - Prior, _Solomon on the Vanity of the World_, III. 240. - - _He danced the Hays._ - - ‘I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.’ - - _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act V. Scene 1. - - _A mistress and a saint in every grove._ Goldsmith’s _Traveller_, - 152. - - ‘_Most dolphin-like._’ _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act V. Scene 2. - - ‘_And there the antic sits_,’ _etc._ _Richard II._, Act III. - Scene 2. - - 56. _Philips’s._ The Pastorals of Pope and Ambrose Philips - (1675?-1749) appeared in Tonson’s _Miscellany_ (1709). - - _Sannazarius._ An English translation of the Piscatory Eclogues - of Jacopo Sannazario was published in 1726. - - ‘_What he beautifully calls_,’ _etc._ See _The Complete Angler_, - Part I. Chap. i. - - ‘_We accompany them_,’ _etc._ _The Complete Angler_, Part I. - Chap. iv. The milkmaid sang ‘Come live with me, and be my - love.’ That ‘smooth song’ (says Walton) ‘which was made by Kit - Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago. - - And the milkmaid’s mother sung an answer to it, which was made by - Sir _Walter Raleigh_ in his younger days.’ - - 57. _Tottenham Cross._ The subject of one of the prints. - - Note. _His friendship for Cotton._ Charles Cotton (1630–1687), - the translator of Montaigne (1685). - - Note. _Dr. Johnson said._ See Mrs. Piozzi’s _Anecdotes_ - (_Johnsonian Miscellanies_, ed. G. B. Hill, i. 332). - - - ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM - -No. 22 of the Round Table series. Leigh Hunt discussed this article in -No. 24 of the series, republished in the 1817 edition of the _Round -Table_, and entitled ‘On the Poetical Character.’ On the subject of -Methodism Hunt had already spoken his mind in a series of articles in -_The Examiner_, which he republished in 1809 under the title of _An -Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism_. - - PAGE - - 58. ‘_To sinner it or saint it._’ Pope’s _Moral Essays_, Ep. II. l. - 15. - - ‘_The whole need not a physician._’ _St. Matthew_, ix. 12. - - ‘_Conceit in weakest_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - 59. _Mawworm._ In Isaac Bickerstaffe’s _Hypocrite_, altered from - Colley Cibber’s _Nonjuror_, which was itself ‘a comedy threshed - out of Molière’s _Tartuffe_.’ See the Lecture on the Comic - Writers of the Last Century in _English Comic Writers_. For - Oxberry’s acting of the part see _A View of the English Stage_. - - ‘_With sound of bell_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene 7. - - ‘_Round fat oily men of God_,’ _etc._ Thomson’s _Castle of - Indolence_, stanza 69. - - ‘_That burning and shining light._’ _St. John_, v. 35. - - Note. ‘_And filled up all the mighty void of sense._’ Pope’s - _Essay on Criticism_, l. 210. - - 60. ‘_The vice_,’ _etc._ _Hebrews_, xii. 1. - - ‘_The Society for the Suppression of Vice._’ Founded in 1802. - Sydney Smith criticised its methods in one of his _Edinburgh - Review_ articles (Jan. 1809). Hazlitt refers to it again. See - _ante_, p. 139. - - ‘_And sweet religion_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - ‘_Numbers without number._’ _Paradise Lost_, III. 346. - - 61. ‘_Dissolves them_,’ _etc._ _Il Penseroso_, ll. 165–166. - - - ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM - -No. 26 of the Round Table series. The essay was in substance republished -in _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_. See _ante_, pp. 244–248, and the -notes thereon. - - PAGE - - 64. ‘_Age cannot wither_,’ _etc._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act II. - Scene 2. - - ‘_’Tis a good piece of work_,’ _etc._ _The Taming of the Shrew_, - Act I. Scene 2. - - ‘_Would, cousin Silence_,’ _etc._ _2 Henry IV._, Act III. Scene - 2. The dialogue on the death of old Double occurs earlier in - the same scene. - - ‘_The most fearful wild-fowl living._’ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, - Act III. Scene 1. - - At the end of this essay in _The Examiner_ Hazlitt added the - following ‘Note Extraordinary’: ‘We had just concluded our - ramble with _Puck_ and _Bottom_, and were beginning to indulge - in some less airy recreations, when in came the last week’s - _Cobbett_,[93] and with one blow overset our Round Table, and - marred all our good things. If while Mr. C. and his lady are - sitting in their garden at Botley, like Adam and Eve in - Paradise, the delight of one another, the envy of their - neighbours, and the admiration of the rest of the world, - suddenly a large fat hog from the wilds of Hampshire should - bolt right through the hedge, and with snorting menaces and - foaming tusks, proceed to lay waste the flower-pots and root up - the potatoes, such as the surprise and indignation of so - economical a couple would be on this occasion, was the - consternation at our Table when Mr. Cobbett himself made his - appearance among us, vowing vengeance against Milton and - Shakespear, _Sir Hugh Evans_ and _Justice Shallow_, and all the - delights of human life. We were not prepared for such an onset. - More barbarous than Mr. Wordsworth’s calling Voltaire - dull,[94] or than Voltaire’s calling Cato the only English - tragedy;[95] more barbarous than Mr. Locke’s admiration of Sir - Richard Blackmore; more barbarous than the declaration of a - German Elector—afterwards made into an English king—that he - hated poets and painters; more barbarous than the Duke of - Wellington’s letter to Lord Castlereagh,[96] or than the - _Catalogue Raisonné_ of the Flemish Masters published in the - _Morning Chronicle_,[97] or than the Latin style of the second - Greek scholar[98] of the age, or the English style of the - first:—more barbarous than any or all of these is Mr. Cobbett’s - attack on our two great poets. As to Milton, except the fine - egotism of the situation of Adam and Eve, which Mr. Cobbett has - applied to himself, there is not much in him to touch - our politician: but we cannot understand his attack upon - Shakespear, which is cutting his own throat. If Mr. Cobbett is - for getting rid of his kings and queens, his fops and his - courtiers, if he is for pelting _Sir Hugh_ and _Falstaff_ off - the stage, yet what will he say to _Jack Cade_ and First and - Second Mob? If we are to scout the Roman rabble, where will the - _Register_ find English readers? Has the author never found - himself out in Shakespear? He may depend upon it he is there, - for all the people that ever lived are there! Has he never been - struck with the valour of _Ancient Pistol_, who “would not - swagger in any shew of resistance to a Barbary-hen”?[99] Can he - not, upon occasion, “aggravate his voice”[100] like _Bottom_ in - the play? In absolute insensibility, he is a fool to _Master - Barnardine_; and there is enough of gross animal instinct in - _Calyban_ to make a whole herd of Cobbetts. Mr. Cobbett admires - Bonaparte; and yet there is nothing finer in any of his - addresses to the French people than what _Coriolanus_ says to - the Romans when they banish him. He abuses the Allies in good - set terms; yet one speech of Constance describes them and their - magnanimity better than all the columns of the _Political - Register_. Mr. Cobbett’s address to the people of England[101] - on the alarm of an invasion, which was stuck on all the - church-doors in Great Britain, was not more eloquent than - _Henry V.’s_ address to his soldiers before the battle of - Agincourt; nor do we think Mr. Cobbett was ever a better - specimen of the common English character than the two soldiers - in the same play. After all, there is something so droll in his - falling foul of Shakespear for want of delicacy, with his - desperate lounges and bear-garden dexterity, snorting, fuming, - and grunting, that we cannot help laughing at the affair, now - that our surprise is over; as we suppose Mr. Cobbett does, if - he can only keep him out of his premises by hallooing and - hooting or dry blows, to see his old friend, Grill,[102] - trudging along the highroad in search of his acorns and - pig-nuts.’ - - - THE BEGGAR’S OPERA - -One of Hazlitt’s ‘Theatrical Examiners,’ and published in _The Examiner_ -on June 18, 1815. - - PAGE - - 65. _The Beggar’s Opera_ was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on - January 29, 1728. - - ‘_Happy alchemy of mind_,’ _etc._ Cf. Boswell (_Life of Johnson_, - ed. G. B. Hill, iii. 65): ‘I have ever delighted in that - intellectual chymistry, which can separate good qualities from - evil in the same person.’ - - ‘_O’erstepping the modesty of nature._’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene - 2. - - ‘_Woman is like_,’ _etc._ _Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. - - _Taken from Tibullus._ Hazlitt probably means Catullus and refers - to the lines (_Carm._ 62) - - ‘Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis,’ etc. - - ‘_I see him sweeter_,’ _etc._ Act I. - - ‘_There is some soul of goodness in things evil._’ _Henry V._, - Act IV. Scene 1. - - 66. ‘_Hussey, hussey_,’ _etc._ _Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. - - _Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives._ Such as _Thoughts on - the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society_ - (1788) and _An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable - World_ (1790). See _ante_, p. 154, for another expression of - Hazlitt’s belief in the disciplinary value of _The Beggar’s - Opera_. - - Note. For further reference to Baron Grimm’s _Correspondance_ - (1812–14) see _ante_, p. 131, the essay ‘On the Literary - Character.’ Claude Pierre Patu (1729–1757) published _Choix de - pièces traduites de l’anglais_ (de Robert Dodsley et John Gay) - in 1756. The collected works of Jean Joseph Vadé (1720–1757) - were published in 1775. - - - ON PATRIOTISM—A FRAGMENT - -This fragment is taken from one of the ‘Illustrations of Vetus’ which -appeared originally in _The Morning Chronicle_ and were republished in -_Political Essays_. - - PAGE - - 67. ‘_The love of mankind_‘, _etc._ Rousseau’s _Emile_, Liv. IV. p. - 279 (edit. Garnier): a favourite quotation of Hazlitt’s. - - - ON BEAUTY - -No. 29 of the Round Table series, and signed in _The Examiner_—‘An -Amateur.’ - - PAGE - - 68. _Three Papers_, _etc._ Reynolds’s papers in the _Idler_ are Nos. - 76, 79, and 82. It is to the last, _On the true idea of - Beauty_, that Hazlitt particularly refers. - - 69. _Spenser’s description of Belphœbe._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book - II. Canto iii. st. 21 _et seq._ - - 70. ‘_Her full dark eyes_,’ _etc._ The reference seems to be to - _Leiden des jungen Werthers_ (December 6). - - 71. _Pope’s translation._ Homer’s _Odyssey_, V. 56–67. - - Note. _A classical friend._ Leigh Hunt. - - Note. ‘_That was Arion crown’d_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, - Book IV. Canto xi. st. 23 and 24. - - Note. _A striking description._ Burke’s _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 89). - - Note. _The idea is in ‘Don Quixote.’_ Part II. Chap, xlviii. In - _The Examiner_ this note was concluded as follows: ‘Much the - same impression which the sight of the Queen of France made on - Mr. Burke’s brain sixteen years before the French Revolution, - did the reading of the New Eloise make on mine at the - commencement of it. “Such is the stuff of which our dreams are - made!”[103] This man (Burke), who was a half poet and a half - philosopher, has done more mischief than perhaps any other - person in the world. His understanding was not competent to the - discovery of any truth, but it was sufficient to palliate a - lie; his reasons, of little weight in themselves, thrown into - the scale of power, were dreadful. Without genius to adorn the - beautiful, he had the art to throw a dazzling veil over - the deformed and disgusting, and to strew the flowers of - imagination over the rotten carcase of corruption, not to - prevent, but to communicate the infection. His jealousy of - Rousseau[104] was one chief cause of his opposition to the - French Revolution. The writings of the one had changed the - institutions of a kingdom; while the speeches of the other, - with the intrigues of his whole party, had changed nothing but - the _turnspit of the King’s kitchen_.[105] He would have - blotted out the broad, pure light of Heaven, because it did not - first shine in upon the narrow, crooked passages of St. - Stephen’s Chapel. The genius of Rousseau had levelled the - towers of the Bastile with the dust; our zealous reformist, who - would rather be doing mischief than nothing, tried therefore to - patch them up again, by calling that loathsome dungeon the - King’s Castle, and by fulsome adulation of the virtues of a - Court Strumpet. This man had the impudence to say[106] that an - Elector of Hanover was raised to the throne of these kingdoms, - “in contempt of the will of the people,” while the hereditary - successor was still alive. He was at once a liar, a coward, and - a slave; a liar to his own heart, a coward to the success of - his own cause, a slave to the power he despised. See his Letter - about the Duke of Bedford, in which the man gets the better of - the sycophant, and he belabours the Duke in good earnest. It is - not a source of regret to reflect that he closed his eyes on - the ruin of liberty, which he had been the principal means of - effecting, and of his own projects, at the same time. He did - not live to see that deliverance of mankind, bound hand and - foot into the absolute, lasting, inexorable power of Kings - and Priests, which the author of Joan of Arc[107] has so - triumphantly celebrated. He did not live to see the sending of - the Liberales of Spain to the gallies, and the liberating the - Afrancesadoes from prison, for which our romantic Laureate, who - sees so much farther into futurity than the Edinburgh - Reviewers,[108] thanks God. He did not live to read that - Sonnet[109] to the King which Mr. Wordsworth has written, in - imitation of Milton’s Sonnet to Cromwell. There is a species of - literary prostitution which has sprung up and spread wide in - these days, more nauseous and despicable than any recorded in - Juvenal. It proves, however, one thing, that is, the force - which knowledge and opinion have acquired, and which makes it - worth while for power to court and pervert those faculties - which were intended to enlighten and reform the world, in order - to plunge it into a darkness that may be felt; and slavery, - that can only cease by putting a stop to the propagation of the - species.’ Hazlitt used a part of this passage as a note to his - essay ‘On Good-Nature.’ See _post_, p. 105 note. - - 72. _Mr. Burke_, _etc._ See his _Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful_, - Part III. Sect. xv. - - _Which describe pleasant motions._ ‘It has been conjectured that - the pleasure derived from visible form, might be always - resolved into the absence of every thing disagreeable to the - touch or difficult in motion.’ Note by Hazlitt in _The - Examiner_. - - ‘_He hath set his bow_,’ _etc._ _Ecclesiasticus_, xliii. 11, 12. - - _Titian’s ‘Bath of Diana.’_ _Diana and Actaeon_, now the property - of the Earl of Ellesmere, in Bridgewater House. Hazlitt - described this picture at length in his _Sketches of the - Principal Picture Galleries in England_ (The Marquis of - Stafford’s Gallery). - - - ON IMITATION - -No. 30 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 73. _The new Spurzheim principles._ See Hazlitt’s essays ‘On Dreams’ - and ‘On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory’ in _The Plain Speaker_. - - 74. Note. _Vanhuysum._ Jan van Huysum (1682–1749). - - 75. _Pansy freak’d with jet._ _Lycidas_, l. 144. - - 76. ‘_A pleasure in art_,’ _etc._ - - ‘There is a pleasure in poetic pains, - Which only poets know.’ - - Cowper’s _Task, The Timepiece_, ll. 285–286. - - Cf. _Table Talk_ (‘On the Pleasure of Painting’): ‘There is a - pleasure in painting which none but painters know.’ The - original of the expression seems to be Dryden’s ‘There is a - pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know’ - (_Spanish Friar_, Act II. Scene 1). - - _Titian’s ‘Schoolmaster.’_ For an account of this picture see - Hazlitt’s _Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in - England_ (the Marquis of Stafford’s Gallery). - - - ON GUSTO - -No. 40 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 77. _Albano’s._ Francesco Albani (1578–1660), a pupil of Ludovico - Caracci. - - 78. _To touch them._ In _The Examiner_ Hazlitt gives the following - note to this passage: ‘This may seem obscure. We will therefore - avail ourselves of our privilege to explain as Members of - Parliament do, when they let fall any thing too paradoxical, - novel, or abstruse, to be immediately apprehended by the other - side of the House. When the Widow Wadman[110] looked over my - Uncle Toby’s map of the Siege of Namur with him, and as he - pointed out the approaches of his battalion in a transverse - line across the plain to the gate of St. Nicholas, kept her - hand constantly pressed against his, if my Uncle Toby had then - “been an artist and could paint,” (as Mr. Fox wished himself to - be,[111] that “he might draw Bonaparte’s conduct to the King of - Prussia in the blackest colours”) my Uncle Toby would have - drawn the hand of his fair enemy in the manner we have above - described. We have heard a good story of this same Bonaparte - playing off a very ludicrous parody of the Widow Wadman’s - stratagem upon as great a commander by sea as my Uncle Toby was - by land. Now, when Sir Isaac Newton, who was sitting smoking - with his mistress’s hand in his, took her little finger and - made use of it as a tobacco-pipe stopper, there was here a - total absence of mind, or a great want of gusto.’ - - _Mr. West._ Benjamin West (1738–1820), historical painter, - succeeded Sir J. Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in - 1792. - - 80. ‘_Or where Chineses_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 438–439. - - ‘_Wild above rule_,’ _etc._ _Ib._ V. 297. - - - ON PEDANTRY - -No. 32 of the Round Table series. See _ante_, p. 382, for a reference by -Hazlitt to this essay. - - PAGE - - 80. _The pedantry of Parson Adams._ See _Joseph Andrews_, Book III. - Chap. v. - - _Scotch Pedagogue._ _Roderick Random_, Chap. xiv. - - _Seeing ourselves_, _etc._ Burns, _To a Louse_, st. 8. - - 81. _Monsieur Jourdain._ In _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. - - Note. ‘_Not to admire anything._’ - - ‘Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici, - Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum.’—Horace, Ep. I. vi. I. - - 82. _In the Library_, _etc._ At his father’s house at Wem. See - _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, i. 33. The _Bibliotheca Fratrum - Polonorum_, _etc._, was published in eight volumes folio, 1656. - - ‘_From all this world’s_,’ _etc._ ‘From worldly cares himselfe he - did esloyne.’ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. Canto iv. st. 20. In - _The Examiner_ Hazlitt published the following note: ‘Mr. - Wordsworth has on a late occasion humorously applied this line - of Spenser to persons holding sinecure places under government. - He seems to intend adding to the list of such places that of - Poet Laureate. This we think a decided improvement on the - system.’ The reference is to Wordsworth’s sonnet, ‘Occasioned - by the Battle of Waterloo,’ beginning ‘The bard whose soul is - meek as dawning day.’ - - 83. ‘_Mitigated authors_,’ _etc._ ‘It was this opinion which - mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be - fellows with kings. Without force, or opposition, it subdued - the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to - submit to the soft collar of social esteem,’ etc. Burke’s - _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. - Payne, ii. 90). - - _The Spectator._ See _The Spectator_, No. 131. - - - THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED - -No. 33 the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 84. _A poetical enthusiast._ Wordsworth presumably. - - ‘_A clerk ther was_,’ _etc._ _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, ll. - 285 _et seq._ - - 85. ‘_Chemist, statesman_,’ _etc._ Dryden’s _Absalom and Achitophel_, - l. 550. - - ‘_Tongues in the trees_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene - 1. - - 86. _Vestris was so far right_, _etc._ Vestris (1729–1808), ‘Le Dieu - de la danse,’ said that Europe contained only three great men, - himself, Voltaire, and Frederick of Prussia. - - _We do not see_, _etc._ Johnson and Wordsworth were of the - opposite opinion. See Boswell’s _Life_, ed. G. B. Hill, iv. - 114, and Rogers’s _Table-Talk_, p. 234. - - 87. _In Froissart’s ‘Chronicles.’_ Book IV. chapter 14 (Panthéon - Litteraire). The man was not a monk at all. - - 88. ‘_The sovereign’st thing on earth._’ _1 Henry IV._, Act I. Scene - 3. - - _Uneasy and insecure._ In _The Examiner_ the following note is - appended: ‘It has been found necessary to cement them with - blood. “Plus de belles paroles, messieurs, je veux du sang,” - is the language of all absolute sovereigns to their subjects, - when the film drops from their eyes which leads mankind to - suppose themselves the property of tyrants. If men are to be - treated like slaves, it is best that they should think - themselves born to be so. _Plus de belles paroles._ The - French Revolution was the necessary consequence of our - English Revolution and of the Reformation. A crusade once - more to re-establish the infallibility of the Pope all over - the Continent would be a logical inference from the late - crusade to restore divine right.’ - - - ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU - -No. 36 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 89. Note. In _The Examiner_ this note was continued as follows: ‘He - was the founder of Jacobinism, which disclaims the division of - the species into two classes, the one the property of the - others. It was of the disciples of _his_ school, where - principle is converted into passion, that Mr. Burke said and - said truly,—“Once a Jacobin, and always a Jacobin!” The adept - in this school does not so much consider the political injury - as the personal insult. This is the way to put the case, to set - the true revolutionary leaven, the self-love which is at the - bottom of every heart, at work, and this was the way in which - Rousseau put it. It then becomes a question between man and - man, which there is but one way of deciding.’ - - 90. ‘_Va Zanetto_,’ _etc._ Part II. liv. 7. - - ‘_Louise Eleonore_,’ _etc._ Part I. liv. 2. - - 91. ‘_As fast_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Scene 2. - - _There are, indeed, impressions_, _etc._ A quotation from - Rousseau’s _Confessions_. See Hazlitt’s essay entitled ‘My - first Acquaintance with Poets.’ - - 92. ‘_Ah, voila de la pervenche!_’ _Confessions_, Part I. liv. 6. - - _Mr. Wordsworth’s discovery._ The reference appears to be to - Wordsworth’s poem, ‘The Sparrow’s Nest.’ - - - ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME - -No. 37 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 93. _Fitzosborne’s Letters_, by William Melmoth the younger - (1710–1799), were published in two vols. in 1742–1747. - Hazlitt’s quotation seems to be merely a summary of a passage - in Letter X. (p. 35, edit. 1748) which is itself quoted from - Wollaston’s _Religion of Nature Delineated_. - - Note. _Burns._ See his autobiographical letter to Dr. John Moore, - 2nd August 1787. (_Works_, ed. Chambers and Wallace, i. 20). - - 94. ‘_Bitter bad judges._’ _Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. Scene 1. - - ‘_Makes ambition virtue._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3. - - _Dr. Johnson._ See his Life of Milton (_Works_, vii. 108). - - ‘_Fame is the spur_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, ll. 70–77. - - _Pluck its fruits, unripe and crude._ _Lycidas_, l. 3. - - 95. _Hogarth’s ‘Distressed Poet.’_ The map of the gold-mines of Peru - was substituted in the impression of 1740 for a print of Pope - thrashing Curll in the original impression of 1736. - - _A man of genius and eloquence._ Coleridge presumably. - - 96. _Elphinstone._ James Elphinston (1721–1809), who superintended an - Edinburgh edition of _The Rambler_, in which he gave English - translations of most of the mottoes. This, however, was far - from being his only literary enterprise, and it is strange that - Hazlitt should ‘know nothing more of him.’ He published many - translations, one of which, _A Specimen of the Translations of - Epigrams of Martial_ (1778), achieved notoriety from its - extreme badness. In his later life he devoted himself to the - invention of a kind of phonetic spelling, which he explained in - _Propriety ascertained in her Picture, or English Speech and - Spelling under Mutual Guides_ (1787), and other works. - - _Yorick and the Frenchman._ Sterne’s _Sentimental Journey_. The - Passport. - - - CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL - -No. 39 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 97. _A respectable publication._ _Edinburgh Review_, xxvi. p. 96 - (Feb. 1816). The passage quoted is from a review by Hazlitt - himself of Schlegel’s _Lectures on Dramatic Literature_. - - - ON GOOD NATURE - -No. 41 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 100. _Says Froissart._ This well-known saying is wrongly attributed to - Froissart. See _Notes and Queries_ for 1863 and subsequent - years. - - 102. _An Englishman, who would be thought a profound one._ Wordsworth. - See p. 116. - - 103. _Forge the seal of the realm_, _etc._ The allusion seems to be to - the events of the spring of 1804 when Lord Eldon, during the - king’s illness, affixed the great seal to a commission giving - the royal assent to certain bills. - - 104. _Good digestion wait on appetite._ _Macbeth_, Act III. Scene 4. - - _Without control._ In _The Examiner_ Hazlitt appended as a note: - ‘Henry VIII. was a good-natured monarch. He cut off his wives’ - heads with as little ceremony as if they had been eels. This - character ought, as Mr. Cobbett says, to be hooted off the - stage, as a disgrace to human nature. Shakspeare represented - kings as they were in his time.’ - - 104. _Mr. Vansittart._ Nicholas Vansittart (1766–1851), created Baron - Bexley in 1823, was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1812 till - 1822. - - _Everything by starts and nothing long._ _Absalom and - Achitophel_, Part I. l. 548. - - 105. Note. This note is part of the note on Burke, which in _The - Examiner_ appeared at the foot of the essay ‘On Beauty.’ See - _ante_, p. 71. - - - ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON’S EVE - -No. 42 of the Round Table series, with occasional passages from No. 43, -on Shakspeare’s female characters, the substance of which was published -in _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_ (_Cymbeline_, _Othello_, and -_Winter’s Tale_). - - PAGE - - 105. ‘_As the vine curls her tendrils._’ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 307. - - 106. ‘_Two of far nobler shape_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 288–311. - - 107. ‘_That day I oft remember_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 449–465. - - ‘_So spake our general mother_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. - 492–501. - - ‘_So much the more_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 8–20. - - 108. ‘_When Adam thus to Eve_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 610–611. - - ‘_To whom thus Eve_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 634. - - ‘_To whom our general ancestor_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. - 659–660. - - ‘_Methought close at mine ear_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. - 35–47. - - ‘_So talked the spirited sly snake._’ _Paradise Lost_, IX. 613. - - ‘_So cheered he his fair spouse_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. - 129–135. - - 109. ‘_Under his forming hands_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. - 470–477. - - ‘_In shadier bower_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 705–719. - - ‘_Meanwhile at table Eve_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 443–450. - - 110. ‘_Yet not more sweet_,’ _etc._ Southey’s _Carmen Nuptiale_, - Proem, stanza 18. - - ‘_O unexpected stroke_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 268–285. - - 111. ‘_This most afflicts me_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 315–333. - - - OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM ‘THE EXCURSION’ - -This essay is composed of two papers by Hazlitt which appeared in _The -Examiner_ on August 21 and August 28, 1814. - - PAGE - - 112. ‘_Without form and void._’ _Genesis_, i. 2. - - 113. ‘_The bare trees and mountains bare._’ Wordsworth, ‘To my - Sister.’ - - ‘_Exchange the shepherd’s flock._’ _Excursion_, Book VI. - - 114. ‘_The sad historian of the pensive vale._’ Goldsmith’s _The - Deserted Village_, l. 136. - - ‘_Our system is not fashioned_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, Book VI. - - ‘_Such as the meeting soul may pierce._’ _L’Allegro_, l. 138. - - ‘_In that fair clime_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, Book IV. - - 115. ‘_Now shall our great discoverers obtain_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, - Book IV. - - 116. ‘_Poor gentleman_,’ _etc._ Wycherley’s _Love in a Wood_, Act III. - Scene 1. - - _Dull._ Wordsworth speaks of _Candide_ as ‘this dull product of a - scoffer’s pen’ (_Excursion_, Book II.) and refers to it again - in Book IV.:— - - ‘Him I mean - Who penned, to ridicule confiding faith, - This sorry Legend.’ - - See _ante_, p. 102. - - 117. _Tout homme reflechi_, _etc._ Cf. ‘J’ose presque assurer que - l’état de réflexion est un état contre nature, et que l’homme - qui médite est un animal dépravé.’ Rousseau’s _Discours sur - l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes_ (édit. Firmin-Didot, - p. 52). - - ‘_From that abstraction I was roused_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, Book - III. - - 118. ‘_For that other loss_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, Book IV. - - 119. ‘_What though the radiance_,’ _etc._ _Intimations of - Immortality_, stanza 10. - - - THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED - -From _The Examiner_, October 2, 1814. - - PAGE - - 120. ‘_With glistering spires_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 550. - - ‘_The great vision of the guarded mount._’ _Lycidas_, l. 161. - - 121. ‘_A sudden illness_,’ _etc._ _Excursion_, Book VI. - - 123. _Aristotle observed._ In _The Poetics_. - - _Bells or Lancaster’s._ Andrew Bell (1753–1832) founder of the - Madras system of education, and Joseph Lancaster (1770–1838). - For an account of these two rival reformers of education see - Leslie Stephen’s _The English Utilitarians_, II. 17–19. - - _Guzman d’Alfarache._ Hazlitt discussed this novel by Mateo - Aleman, published in 1599, in his _English Comic Writers_ - (Lecture on the English Novelists). - - _A discipline of humanity._ Bacon’s _Essays_, ‘Of Marriage and - Single Life.’ - - 124. _The Whig and Jacobite friends._ _Excursion_, Book VI. - - _Sir Alfred Irthing._ _Excursion_, Book VII. - - ‘_Have proved a monument._’ From the sonnet in which Wordsworth - dedicated _The Excursion_ to Lord Lonsdale. - - - CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. PITT - -This ‘character’ originally appeared in _Free Thoughts on Public -Affairs_, _etc._ (1806). It must have been a favourite with the author, -for he afterwards reprinted it in _The Eloquence of the British Senate_, -_etc._ (1807), in _The Round Table_ (1817), and in _Political Essays_ -(1819). It also appeared in the posthumous _Winterslow_ (1839). See note -on p. 383, _ante_. - - PAGE - - 127. ‘_They had learned the trick_,’ _etc._ Hobbes’s _Behemoth_ - (_Works_, ed. Molesworth, vi. 240). - - 128. ‘_Not matchless_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VI. 341–2. - - _And in its liquid texture_, _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VI. 148–149. - - - ON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY - -From _The Examiner_, October 9, 1814, ‘Common-places,’ No. 1. - - PAGE - - 129. ‘_But ’tis not so above._’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 3. - - ‘_Compelled to give in evidence_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ - - 130. ‘_Open and apparent shame._’ _1 Henry IV._, Act II. Scene 4. - - 131. _Elymas the sorcerer._ See _Sketches of the Principal Picture - Galleries in England_ (the Pictures at Hampton Court) where - Hazlitt describes this cartoon. - - - ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER - -Reprinted with some omissions from a letter which appeared in _The -Morning Chronicle_ for October 28, 1813, entitled ‘Baron Grimm and the -Edinburgh Reviewers.’ - - PAGE - - 131. _A late number_, _etc._ _Edinburgh Review_, vol. xxi. July 1813. - The _Correspondance_ of Friedrich Melchior, Baron Grimm - (1723–1807) was published in 1812–14. The article in the - _Edinburgh_ is by Jeffrey. Hazlitt, in _The Examiner_, quotes - from it at greater length, and proceeds: ‘These remarks, - however shrewd and ingenious in themselves, are somewhat - irrelevant to the literary and philosophical character of Mr. - Grimm and his friends. There seems to have been an odd - transposition of ideas in the writer’s mind; for the whole of - his reasoning relates to the manners of fashionable life, or - the tendency of mixed and agreeable society in general, to - produce levity and insensibility, and does not at all apply to - the peculiar defects of the literary character, or account for - that hard-heartedness, which Mr. Burke attributes, by way of - emphasis, to the _thorough-bred metaphysician_.[112] The two - characters are evidently distinct, and proceed from very - different and even opposite causes, which ought not to have - been confounded. It would have been a task worthy of the - Edinburgh Reviewers to have pointed out the sources of each, - and to have shewn how both appear to have united in the present - instance with the natural levity of the French character, to - produce that “faultless monster which the world ne’er saw” - before.[113] Much is undoubtedly to be given to accidental and - local circumstances. Boswell’s Life of Johnson presents a very - different picture of men and manners from Grimm’s Memoirs, - though in the circle described by the former there were men who - at least rivalled M. Grimm in literature, and in politeness and - knowledge of mankind might vie with Baron d’Holbach. The - profligacy of the French court, and the mummeries of the - established religion might naturally produce an almost satiric - license and impudence among the enlightened partisans of the - new order of things, and lead them to regard all religion as a - barefaced cheat, and every pretension to virtue as hypocrisy. - The peculiar intelligible features of the philosophical and - literary character are, however, stamped on every page of M. - Grimm’s correspondence; and as they do not seem to have been - very well distinguished by the Reviewer, I shall venture to - throw out a few hints on the subject, in the hope that they may - be taken up and embodied in an authentic form in some future - supplementary volume.’ - - 133. _Multiplicity of persons and things._ Hazlitt quotes with - characteristic inaccuracy the _Edinburgh_ article on Grimm (see - p. 131). A few lines further on he speaks of a ‘_succession_ of - persons and things.’ - - _Rocks of Meillerie._ _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part IV. 17. - - 135. _Mr. Shandy._ _Tristram Shandy_, V. Chap, iii., where Sterne - tells the story of Cicero and his daughter referred to in the - text. - - ‘_Hæret lateri_,’ _etc._ Virgil, _Aeneid_, V. 73. - - ‘_Clad in flesh and blood._’ From Burke, _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 101). - - _The ghosts of Homer’s heroes._ _Odyssey_, Book XI. - - ‘_Play round the head, but never reach the heart._’ - - ‘All fame is foreign, but of true desert; - Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart.’ - - Pope’s _Essay on Man_, IV. 254. - - Hazlitt’s letter in _The Morning Chronicle_ concluded as - follows: ‘There is another very striking distinction between - the indifference and insensibility to moral good and evil, to - be met with in the philosopher or the man of the world, which - the Reviewer has not pointed out. In the one, it is the - effect of “frivolity, dissipation, and familiarity with - vice”; in the other, it is oftener the effect of disappointed - hope and early enthusiasm. The aversion of the philosopher to - moral speculations has almost always the same source as the - exclamation of Brutus, “Oh Virtue! I embraced thee as a - substance, and I find thou art a shadow!” There is hardly any - one of the persons who figure in these memoirs who did not - set out with some panacea for the salvation of mankind, with - as much sanguine extravagance as ever knight-errants indulged - to conquer giants and rescue distressed damsels. The wounds - received in the conflict might close, but the scar would - remain. Indeed, the practical knowledge of vice and misery - makes a stronger impression on the mind, when it has once - imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus becomes - embodied in a general principle, and shews its happy form in - all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over - us. It follows us wherever we go—if we fly into the uttermost - parts of the earth, it is there; whether we turn to the right - or the left, we cannot escape from it. - - ‘This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one to - which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first - ardour of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the - finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the - jarring of the world. - - ‘There seems a peculiar tenaciousness in the French character in - this respect, an unfortunate aptitude to cling to every vice - and catch at every folly, or else a want of freshness of - feeling, of that elastic force about the heart which repels the - approach of moral or intellectual depravity. - - ‘What is said of the tone of the literary society of Paris, is - equally misunderstood. The Reviewers hardly mean to represent - the exclusion of tediousness and pertinacious wrangling, as the - general character of assemblies of wits, and philosophers in - all ages and nations. If so, their opinion differs from that of - the Sage. The fact is, that the men of letters at this period, - by mixing in the fashionable circles, took the tone of good - company, as the people of fashion, by their familiarity with - men of letters, received the tincture of philosophy. The two - characters were blended together in real life, and are - confounded in the Edinburgh Review.’ - - 135. Note. _Plato’s Cave._ _Republic_, Book VII. - - - ON COMMON-PLACE CRITICS - -No. 47 of the Round Table series. - - PAGE - - 136. _Tout homme réfléchi_, _etc._ See note to p. 117. - - ‘_Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive._’ Dryden, _The - Hind and the Panther_, Part I. l. 315. - - _We have already._ In a paper (by Leigh Hunt) _On Commonplace - People_ (_Examiner_, March 19, 1815). - - 138. _The music which has been since introduced_, _etc._ The famous - ‘Macbeth music’ written for D’Avenant’s version produced, - according to Genest, in 1672. This music, traditionally - assigned to Matthew Locke, is now attributed to Purcell. - - 139. _Mr. Westall’s drawings._ Richard Westall (1765–1836). - - _Horne Tooke’s account_, _etc._ See _The Diversions of Purley_ - and Hazlitt’s essay on Horne Tooke in _The Spirit of the Age_. - - ‘_For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit._’ Pope’s _Moral - Essays_, II. 114. - - _The new Schools for all._ For the famous educational schemes - of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster and for Bentham’s - _Panopticon_, see Leslie Stephen’s _English Utilitarians_. - - _The Penitentiary._ Millbank Prison, formerly known as the - Penitentiary, was the ultimate result of Bentham’s _Panopticon_ - scheme and was opened in 1816. - - _The new Bedlam._ The new Bedlam Hospital was opened in 1815. - - _The new steamboats._ The first steamboat had been launched on - the Clyde in 1812. - - _The gaslights._ The Chartered Gas Company obtained its Act of - Parliament in 1810. - - _The Bible Society._ The British and Foreign Bible Society was - established in 1804. - - _The Society for the Suppression of Vice._ See _ante_, note to p. - 60. - - - ON THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION - -These two papers are taken (with considerable variations) from the two -last of three ‘Literary Notices,’ dealing with the Catalogue, which -Hazlitt contributed to _The Examiner_ on Nov. 3, Nov. 10, and Nov. 17, -1816. The first of these ‘Literary Notices’ was never republished by -Hazlitt. All three were republished in their _Examiner_ form in the -second volume of _Criticisms on Art_, _etc._ (2 vols., 1843–44), edited -by the author’s son, who omitted from his edition of _The Round Table_ -the two essays in the present text. All three essays will be included in -a later volume of the present edition. - - PAGE - - 140. _Our former remarks._ In _The Examiner_, Nov. 3, 1816. - - 141. _The Prince Regent’s new sewer._ Presumably the Regent’s Canal, - part of which was opened in 1814. - - 142. ‘_The scale by which_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 591. - - _Mrs. Peachum’s coloured handkerchiefs._ _Beggar’s Opera_, Act 1. - - 143. ‘_A name great above all names._’ _Philippians_, ii. 9. - - 143. _Mr. Payne Knight._ Richard Payne Knight gave evidence in 1816 - before a Select Committee of the House of Commons upon the - value of the Elgin Marbles. He placed them in the second rank - of art, and valued them at £25,000. They were bought by the - nation for £35,000. Haydon the artist wrote a long letter to - _The Examiner_ (March 17, 1816) on the subject, entitled ‘On - the Judgment of Connoisseurs being preferred to that of - Professional Men, Elgin Marbles, etc.’ - - 144. _Mr. Soane._ John Soane (1753–1837), knighted in 1831. His house - and its contents, presented by him to the nation in 1833, now - form the Soane Museum. - - ‘_With riches fineless._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3. - - ‘_Beastly; subtle as the fox_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act. III. - Scene 3. - - ‘_The link_,’ _etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act I. Scene 3. - - _It is many years ago_, _etc._ Apparently, says Mr. W. C. - Hazlitt, about 1798, at St. Neot’s, Huntingdonshire. See _The - English Comic Writers_, where this passage is repeated in the - Lecture on the Works of Hogarth. - - 145. ‘_How were we then uplifted._’ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. - Scene 2. - - ‘_Temples not made with hands_‘, _etc._ _Acts_, vii. 48. - - _E. O. Tables._ A new game introduced shortly before 1782, when a - Bill was brought in prohibiting it under severe penalties. The - Bill was lost in the House of Lords. See _Parl. Hist._, vol. - xxiii. pp. 110–113. - - ‘_Cutpurses of the art_,’ _etc._ - - ‘A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, - That from a shelf the precious diadem stole - And put it in his pocket!’ - - _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - - THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED - - 146. ‘_That a great man’s memory_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2. - - _Their late President._ Sir Joshua Reynolds. - - 147. ‘_Feel the future in the instant._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5. - - 148. ‘_Depend upon it_,’ _etc._ This letter was not avowed by Burke, - but was attributed to him by Barry himself and by Sir James - Prior in his _Life of Burke_, (Bohn, p. 227). - - 149. ‘_Playing at will_,’ _etc._ - - ‘——and played at will - Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet, - Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.’ - - _Paradise Lost_, v. 294–296. - - _Highmore_, _etc._ Joseph Highmore (1692–1780); Francis Hayman - (1708–1776), one of the founders of the Royal Academy; Thomas - Hudson (1701–1779), portrait painter; Sir Godfrey Kneller - (1646–1723). - - ‘_Like flowers in men’s caps_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Scene - 3. - - _Hoppner_, _etc._ John Hoppner (1758–1810), the portrait painter; - John Opie (1761–1807); Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769–1850), - President of the Royal Academy from 1830 to 1845; Philip James - Loutherbourg (1740–1812), scene painter to Garrick; John - Francis Rigaud (1742–1810); George Romney (1734–1802). Alderman - John Boydell’s (1719–1804) famous Shakespeare Gallery comprised - one hundred and seventy pictures. The engravings were published - in 1802. - - 150. ‘_Gone to the vault_,’ _etc._ A favourite quotation of Burke’s - from the lines in Shakespeare:— - - ‘To that same ancient vault - Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.’ - - _Romeo and Juliet_, Act IV. Scene 1. - - _The picture ... of Charles I._ In Hazlitt’s time this picture - was at Blenheim, and he referred to it in his _Sketches of the - Principal Picture Galleries in England_ (Pictures at Oxford and - Blenheim). It was bought by Parliament from the Duke of - Marlborough in 1885, and is now in the National Gallery. - - _The Waterloo Exhibition._ The Waterloo Museum in Pall Mall - ‘which now (according to the advertisement) presents to public - view upwards of 1000 mementos of the late extraordinary events - upon the Continent.’ - - ‘_From this time forth_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Scene 2. - - _The English are a shopkeeping nation._ Hazlitt probably refers - to the exclamation of Barère said to have been repeated by - Napoleon. The expression seems to have been first used by Dean - Tucker of Gloucester in a _Tract_ of 1766. - - ‘_Balm of hurt minds_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 2. - - 151. ‘_Smoothing the raven down_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 251–252. - - - ON POETICAL VERSATILITY - -This fragment is taken from the third of a series of four ‘Illustrations -of the Times Newspaper,’ which Hazlitt contributed to _The Examiner_ -under the heading of ‘Literary Notices.’ The first of these four papers -(Dec. 1, 1816) has not been republished; the other three, dated -respectively December 15, 1816, December 22, 1816, and January 12, 1817, -were published in _Political Essays_. - - PAGE - - 151. ‘_Heaven’s own tinct._’ _Cymbeline_, Act II. Scene 2. - - ‘_Being so majestical_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 1. - - 152. _Poets, it has been said._ See _Political Essays_ (Mr. Southey’s - New Year’s Ode). - - _They do not like_, _etc._ The reference is to Southey, Poet - Laureate, and Wordsworth, distributor of stamps for the county - of Westmoreland. - - - ON ACTORS AND ACTING - -This essay and the next are based upon the last (No. 48) of the Round -Table series, which appeared in _The Examiner_ for Jan. 5, 1817. Hazlitt -has, however, interpolated into both essays various passages from former -theatrical criticisms. The paper in the _Round Table_ appears to have -been inspired by Colley Cibber’s _Apology for his Life_. A general -reference may here be made to that work, to the volume in the present -edition containing Hazlitt’s dramatic criticisms, and to Lamb’s and -Leigh Hunt’s essays on the stage. - - PAGE - - 153. ‘_The abstracts_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2. - - 154. _George Barnwell._ By George Lillo (1693–1739), produced at Drury - Lane Theatre on June 22, 1731. The play was frequently revived, - and was in some places acted annually as a moral lesson to - apprentices. - - _The Inconstant._ Farquhar’s comedy (1702). _Orinda_ should be - _Oriana_. - - _Mr. Liston._ John Liston (1776?-1846),the comic actor, who made - his first appearance in 1805 and retired in 1837. - - 155. _Sir George Etherege_ (1635?-1691), the dramatist. See _English - Comic Writers_, where a part of this passage is repeated. - - _John Kemble._ John Philip Kemble (1757–1823). Hazlitt wrote an - account of his retirement from the stage, which took place at - Covent Garden on June 23, 1817. - - _Pierre._ In Otway’s _Venice Preserved_ (1682), ‘one of the - happiest and most spirited of all Mr. Kemble’s performances’ - (_A View of the English Stage_). - - _The Stranger._ Benjamin Thompson’s (1776?-1816) play, ‘The - Stranger,’ translated from Kotzebue, was produced in 1798, - Kemble playing the title-rôle. See Hazlitt’s essay on ‘Mr. - Kemble’s Retirement.’ - - ‘_A tale of other times._’ ‘A tale of the times of old!’ the - opening words of Macpherson’s _Ossian_. - - _One of the most affecting things_, _etc._ This paragraph is - taken from a ‘Theatrical Examiner’ (June 4, 1815) on the - retirement of John Bannister (1760–1836) from the stage. For - Bannister and Richard Suett (1755–1805) see Hazlitt’s essay ‘On - Play-Going and on Some of our old Actors,’ and Lamb’s ‘On Some - of the old Actors.’ - - _The Prize._ By Prince Hoare (1755–1834), originally produced in - 1793. - - _Mrs. Storace._ Anna Selina Storace or Storache (1766–1817), the - singer and actress, played in ‘The Prize’ in 1793. - - _My Grandmother._ By Prince Hoare, produced in 1793. - - _The Son-in-Law._ A comic opera by John O’Keeffe (1747–1833), - produced in 1779. - - _Scrub._ In _The Beaux’ Stratagem_ of Farquhar. - - Thomas King (1730–1805), the original Sir Peter Teazle; William - Parsons (1736–1795); James William Dodd (1740–1796); John Quick - (1748–1831), who made his last appearance in 1813; and John - Edwin the elder (1749–1790). See Hazlitt’s essay ‘On Play-Going - and Some of our old Actors.’ - - 156. ‘_All the world’s a stage_’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. - Scene 7. - - - THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED - -A large part of the first paragraph of this essay appeared originally in -a notice of Kean’s Sir Giles Overreach (‘Theatrical Examiner,’ Jan. 14, -1816). See _A View of the English Stage_. - - PAGE - - 156. ‘_Leaving the world no copy._’ _Twelfth Night_, Act I. Scene 5. - - _Colley Cibber’s account._ See Chap. iv. of Cibber’s _Apology_. - - _Miss O’Neill._ Eliza O’Neill (1791–1872) made her last - appearance on the stage on July 13, 1819, shortly before her - marriage with Mr. Becher, who afterwards became a baronet. - Hazlitt in an article on her retirement (see _A View of the - English Stage_) said that ‘her excellence (unrivalled by any - actress since Mrs. Siddons) consisted in truth of nature and - force of passion.’ - - _Mrs. Siddons._ Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) appeared without - success in London in 1775 and 1776, gained a great reputation - in Manchester and Bath, and reappeared in London on October 10, - 1782 in Garrick’s _Isabella_, a version of Southerne’s _Fatal - Marriage_. After a long series of triumphs she made her - farewell appearance on June 29, 1812, as Lady Macbeth. - Hazlitt’s notices of her are confined to two of the occasional - benefit performances which she gave before she finally retired - in June 1819. See _A View of the English Stage_ (June 15, 1816, - and June 7, 1817). - - 157. ‘_We have seen what a ferment_,’ _etc._ See the essays above, ‘On - the Catalogue Raisonné of the British Institution.’ - - _Betterton_, _etc._ Thomas Betterton (1635?-1710); Barton Booth - (1681–1733); Robert Wilks (1665?-1732); Samuel Sandford, a - well-known actor on the Restoration stage, who died early in - the eighteenth century; James Nokes (_d._ 1692); Anthony Leigh - (_d._ 1692); William Pinkethman (_d._ 1724); William Bullock - (_d._ 1740?); Richard Estcourt (1668–1712); Thomas Dogget (_d._ - 1721): Elizabeth Barry (1658–1713); Susanna Mountfort, the - daughter of William Mountfort, the actor and dramatist, who was - murdered by Captain Hill and Lord Mohun in 1692; Anne Oldfield - (1683–1730); Anne Bracegirdle (1663?-1748), who retired from - the stage in 1707 after being defeated in a competition with - Mrs. Oldfield; Susannah Maria Cibber (1714–1766), sister of - Arne the composer, and wife of Theophilus Cibber, famous first - as a singer (especially of Handel’s music), and later as an - actress of tragedy. - - _Cibber himself._ Colley Cibber (1671–1757), actor and dramatist, - Poet Laureate from 1730 till his death. For a very entertaining - account of himself and of nearly all the well-known actors and - actresses whose names appear in the preceding note see his - _Apology for his Life_ (1740). - - _Macklin_, _etc._ Charles Macklin (1697?-1797), actor and - dramatist, whose great part was Shylock; James Quin - (1693–1766); John Rich (1682–1761), the originator of pantomime - in England (his name is substituted by Hazlitt for that of Peg - Woffington, which appeared in the original _Round Table_ - paper); Catherine or Kitty Clive (1711–1785), whose acting and - ‘sprightliness of humour’ were admired by Dr. Johnson, and - Hannah Pritchard (1711–1768), who created the part of Irene in - Johnson’s play, and Frances Abington (1737–1815), well-known - members of Garrick’s company; Thomas Weston (1737–1776), and - Edward Shuter (1728–1776), two of the best comic actors of - their time. - - ‘_Gladdened life_,’ _etc._ A composite quotation from Johnson’s - well-known reference to Garrick (_Lives of the Poets_, Edmund - Smith). See Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, ed. G. B. Hill, iii. - 387. - - _Our hundred days._ The reference is a characteristic one to - Buonaparte’s hundred days in Europe in 1815. - - _Betterton’s Hamlet or his Brutus_, _etc._ Colley Cibber - (_Apology_, Chap, iv.) refers particularly to these two - impersonations, describes (Chap. xiv.) Booth’s performance of - Cato in 1713, and specially eulogises Mrs. Barry’s Monimia - and Belvidera in Otway’s plays, _The Orphan_ and _Venice - Preserved_. (Chap. v.). See Hazlitt’s lecture ‘On the Spirit - of Ancient and Modern Literature’ in his _Lectures on the - Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_ for a criticism of these - plays. He saw and reviewed Miss O’Neill’s performances in - both these characters. See _A View of the English Stage_. - - _Penkethman’s manner_, _etc._ See _The Tatler_, No. 188. - - _Dowton._ Hazlitt spoke of William Dowton (1764–1851) as ‘a - genuine and excellent comedian’ (‘On Play-Going and on Some of - the old Actors’). There are frequent notices of him in _A View - of the English Stage_. - - 157. Note. _Marriage à la mode._ By Dryden, first produced in 1672. In - _The Examiner_ this note forms part of the text. At the end of - the passage quoted Hazlitt proceeds: ‘The whole of Colley - Cibber’s work is very amusing to a dramatic amateur. It gives - an interesting account of the progress of the stage, which in - his time appears to have been in a state _militant_. Two - actors, _Kynaston_ and _Montfort_ were run through the body in - disputes with gentlemen, with impunity; and the Master of the - Revels arrested any of the two companies who was refractory to - the managers, at his pleasure. _Dogget_ was brought up in this - manner from Norwich, by two constables: but _Dogget_ being a - whig, and a surly fellow, got a _Habeas Corpus_, and the Master - of the Revels was driven from the field.’ Edward Kynaston - (1640–1706) was beaten more than once at the instance of Sir - Charles Sedley whom he impersonated on the stage. For the story - of the Lord Chamberlain and Dogget, see Cibber’s _Apology_ - (Chap. x.). - - 158. _Sir Harry Wildair._ Farquhar’s _Sir Harry Wildair_, a - continuation of _The Constant Couple_, was produced in 1701. - - ‘_The Jew that Shakespeare drew._’ This is an exclamation - (attributed to Pope) overheard at one of Macklin’s - representations of Shylock. - - _As often as we are pleased._ The following passage from _The - Examiner_ is omitted by Hazlitt: ‘We have no curiosity about - things or persons that we never heard of. Mr. Coleridge - professes in his Lay Sermon to have discovered a new faculty, - by which he can divine the future. This is lucky for himself - and his friends, who seem to have lost all recollection of the - past.’ Hazlitt here refers to _The Statesman’s Manual; or, The - Bible the best guide to political skill and foresight: A Lay - Sermon, addressed to the Higher Classes of Society_ (1816), - known as the first Lay Sermon. Hazlitt wrote two notices of it - in _The Examiner_, one of which (September 8, 1816) was based - merely on newspaper announcements of its forthcoming appearance - (see _Political Essays_); and probably, as Coleridge believed, - reviewed it in the _Edinburgh Review_ for December 1816. - - _Players, after all_, _etc._ This passage to the end of the - paragraph is from a ‘Theatrical Examiner,’ January 14, 1816. - - _Actors have been accused_, _etc._ The whole of this paragraph is - taken from a ‘Theatrical Examiner,’ March 31, 1816. - - ‘_The web of our life_,’ _etc._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act - IV. Scene 3. - - 159. ‘_Like the giddy sailor_,’ _etc._ _Richard III._, Act III. Scene - 4. - - _A neighbouring country._ Hazlitt probably refers to France where - the disqualifications of actors had only recently been removed - by the Revolution government. For an account of ecclesiastical - intolerance towards actors, especially in France, see Lecky’s - _The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe_, II. 316 _et - seq._ - - ‘_A consummation_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1. - - ‘_The wine of life_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 3. - - 160. ‘_Hurried from fierce extremes_,’ _etc._ - - ‘——and feel by turns the bitter change - Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,’ etc. - - _Paradise Lost_, II. 599 _et seq._ - - _The strolling player in ‘Gil Blas.’_ _Gil Blas_, Liv. II. Chap. - viii. - - - WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE: A FRAGMENT - -In _The Morning Chronicle_ for January 11 and 15, 1814, Hazlitt -published two papers entitled ‘Fragments on Art. Why the Arts are not -progressive?’ Later in the year he contributed two papers to _The -Champion_ (August 28, 1814, and September 11, 1814) under the heading -‘Fine Arts. Whether they are promoted by Academies and Public -Institutions?’ and in a letter (October 2) replied to the criticisms of -a correspondent. The present ‘Fragment’ is composed of (1) the first of -the articles in _The Morning Chronicle_ and part of the second, and (2) -part of the second article in _The Champion_. Much of the matter of the -present essay is embodied in Hazlitt’s article on the Fine Arts, -contributed to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. - - PAGE - - 160. ‘_It is often made a subject_,’ _etc._ The first three paragraphs - are taken from _The Morning Chronicle_, January 11, 1814. In - _The Champion_ for August 28, 1814, the first two paragraphs - appear as a quotation from a ‘contemporary critic.’ - - _Antæus._ The story of Antæus the giant is referred to by Milton - (_Paradise Regained_, IV. 563 _et seq._). - - 161. _Nothing is more contrary_, _etc._ This paragraph and part of the - next are repeated at the beginning of the Lecture on Shakspeare - and Milton in _Lectures on the English Poets_. - - 162. _Guido._ Substituted for Claude Lorraine, upon whom, in _The - Morning Chronicle_, Hazlitt has the following note: ‘In - speaking thus of Claude, we yield rather to common opinion than - to our own. However inferior the style of his best landscapes - may be, there is something in the execution that redeems all - defects. In taste and grace nothing can ever go beyond them. He - might be called, if not the perfect, the faultless painter. Sir - Joshua Reynolds used to say, that there would be another - Raphael, before there was another Claude. In Mr. Northcote’s - Dream of a Painter (see his _Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds_), - there is an account of Claude Lorraine, so full of feeling, so - picturesque, so truly classical, so like Claude, that we cannot - resist this opportunity of copying it out.’ The passage quoted - from Northcote is the paragraph beginning, ‘Now tired with pomp - and splendid shew.’ See Northcote’s Varieties on Art (The Dream - of a Painter) in his _Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds_, _etc._ - (1813–1815) p. xvi. - - ‘_The human face divine._’ _Paradise Lost_, III. 44. - - ‘_Circled Una’s angel face_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I. - Canto iii. st. 4. - - _Griselda._ See _The Canterbury Tales_ (The Clerk’s Tale). - - _The Flower and the Leaf._ This poem, a great favourite of - Hazlitt’s, is not now attributed to Chaucer. - - 163. _The divine story of the Hawk._ _The Decameron_ (Fifth Day, Novel - IX.). Hazlitt continually refers to the story. - - _Isabella._ _The Decameron_ (Fourth Day, Novel V.). - - _So Lear_, _etc._ _King Lear_, Act II. Scene 4. - - _Titian._ The picture referred to is one of those which Hazlitt - copied while he was studying in the Louvre in 1802. See - _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, I. 88. He frequently mentions it. - - _Nicolas Poussin._ ‘But, above all, who shall celebrate, in terms - of fit praise, his picture of the shepherds in the Vale of - Tempe going out in a fine morning of the spring, and coming to - a tomb with this inscription:—Et ego in Arcadia vixi!’ (_Table - Talk_, ‘On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin.’) - - _In general, it must happen_, _etc._ The two concluding - paragraphs are taken from _The Champion_, September 11, 1814. - - _Current with the world._ The following passage in _The Champion_ - is here omitted: ‘Common sense, which has been sometimes - appealed to as the criterion of taste, is nothing but the - common capacity, applied to common facts and feelings; but it - neither is nor pretends to be, the judge of anything else. To - suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works - of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce - them.’ - - _Count Castiglione._ Baldassare Count Castiglione (1478–1529), - whose famous _Il Cortegiano_ was translated into English by Sir - Thomas Hoby under the title of ‘The Courtyer’ (1561). - - - CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS - - PAGE - - 171. _It is observed by Mr. Pope._ Ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. X. - pp. 534–535. - - _A gentleman of the name of Mason._ Neither George Mason - (1735–1806), author of _An Essay on Design in Gardening_, 1768, - nor John Monck Mason (1726–1809), Shakespearian commentator, is - the author of the work alluded to by Hazlitt, but Thomas - Whately (_d._ 1772) whose _Remarks on some of the Characters of - Shakespere_ was published after Thomas Whately’s death by his - brother, the Rev. Jos. Whately, in 1785, as ‘by the author of - _Observations on Modern Gardening_’ [1770]; a second edition - was published in 1808 with the author’s name on the title-page, - and a third in 1839, edited by Archbishop Whately, Thomas - Whately’s nephew. - - _Richardson’s Essays._ _Essays on Shakespeare’s Dramatic - Characters._ 1774–1812. By William Richardson (1743–1814). - - _Schlegel’s Lectures on the Drama._ _A Course of Lectures on - Dramatic Art and Literature._ By A. W. von Schlegel. Delivered - at Vienna in 1808. English translation, by John Black, in 1815. - The quotation which follows will be found in Bohn’s one vol. - edition, 1846, pp. 363–371, and the further references given in - these notes are to the same edition. - - 174. ‘_to do a great right._’ _Mer. Ven._ IV. 1. - - ‘_alone is high fantastical._’ _Twelfth Night_, I. 1. - - 175. _Dr. Johnson’s Preface to his Edition of Shakespear._ 1765. - - ‘_swelling figures._’ Dr. Johnson’s _Preface_. See Malone’s - _Shakespeare_, 1821, vol. i. p. 75. - - 176. _Dover cliff in_ LEAR, Act IV. 6. - - _flowers in_ THE WINTER’S TALE, Act IV. 4. - - _Congreve’s description of a ruin in the_ MOURNING BRIDE, Act II. - 1. - - 177. _the sleepy eye of love._ Cf. ‘The sleepy eye that spoke the - melting soul.’ Pope, _Imit. 1st Epis. 2nd. Bk. Horace_, l. 150. - - _In his tragic scenes._ Dr. Johnson’s _Preface_, p. 71. - - _His declamations_, _etc._ _Ibid._, p. 75. - - _But the admirers_, _etc._ _Ibid._, p. 75. - - 178. _in another work, The Round Table._ See pp. 61–64. - - - CYMBELINE - -When the name of the Play is not given it is to be understood that the -reference is to the Play under discussion. Differences between the text -quoted by Hazlitt and the text of the _Globe_ Shakespeare which seem -worth pointing out are indicated in square brackets. - - PAGE - - 179. _Dr. Johnson is of opinion._ Dr. Johnson’s _Preface_, p. 73. - - 180. _Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage._ _Apology for - the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber_ (1740), vol. i. chap. iv. - - 181. _My lord_, Act I. 6. - - _What cheer_, Act III. 4. The six following quotations in the - text are in the same scene. - - 182. _My dear lord_, Act III. 6. - - _And when with wild wood-leaves_ and _with fairest flowers_, Act - IV. 2. - - 183. _Cytherea, how bravely_, Act II. 2. - - _Me of my lawful pleasure_, Act II. 5. - - _Whose love-suit_, Act III. 4. - - _the ancient critic_, Aristophanes of Byzantium. - - 184. _Out of your proof_, Act III. 3. - - 185. _The game’s a-foot_ [is up], Act III. 3. - - _under the shade._ _As You Like It_, Act II. 7. - - _See, boys!_ Act III. 3. - - _Nay, Cadwell_, Act IV. 2. - - 186. _Stick to your journal course_, Act IV. 2. - - _creatures_ and _Your Highness_, Act I. 5. - - - MACBETH - - 186. _The poet’s eye._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V. 1. - - your only _tragedy-maker_. It would be better to italicise only - ‘tragedy’; the reference is probably to _Hamlet_, III. 2, ‘your - only jig-maker.’ - - _the air_ [heaven’s breath] _smells wooingly_ and _the - temple-haunting martlet builds_ [does approve by his loved - mansionry], Act I. 6. - - 187. _the blasted heath_, Act I. 3. - - _air-drawn dagger_, Act III. 4. - - _gracious Duncan_, Act III. 1. - - _blood-boultered Banquo_, Act IV. 1. - - _What are these_, Act I. 3. - - _bends up_, Act I. 7. - - _The deed_ [The attempt and not the deed confounds us], Act II. - 2. - - _preter_ [super] _natural solicitings_, Act I. 3. - - 188. _Bring forth_ and _screw his courage_, Act I. 7. - - _lost so poorly_ and _a little water_, Act II. 2. - - _the sides of his intent_, Act I. 7. - - _for their future days_ and _his fatal entrance_, Act I. 5. - - _Come all you spirits_, Act I. 5. - - 189. _Duncan comes there_, Act I. 5. The two following quotations in - the text are in the same scene. - - _Mrs. Siddons._ Sarah Siddons (1755–1831). It was as Lady Macbeth - that Mrs. Siddons made her ‘last’ appearance on the stage, June - 29, 1812. She returned occasionally, and Hazlitt saw her act - the part at Covent Garden, June 7, 1817. See note to p. 156, - and also Hazlitt’s _A View of the English Stage_. - - 190. _There is no art_, Act I. 4. - - _How goes the night_, Act II. 1. - - _Light thickens_, Act III. 2–3. - - 191. _So fair and foul_, Act I. 3. - - _Such welcome and unwelcome news together_ [things at once] and - _Men’s lives_, Act IV. 3. - - _Look like the innocent flower_, Act I. 5. - - _To him and all_ [all and him], _Avaunt_, and _himself again_, - Act III. 4. - - _he may sleep_, Act IV. 1. - - _Then be thou jocund_, Act III. 2. - - _Had he not resembled_, Act II. 2. - - _they should be women_, and _in deeper consequence_, Act I. 3. - - 192. _Why stands Macbeth_, Act IV. 1. - - _the milk of human kindness_, Act I. 5. - - _himself alone._ _The Third Part of King Henry VI._, Act V. 6. - - _For Banquo’s issue_, Act III. 1. - - 193. _Duncan is in his grave_, Act III. 2. - - _direness is thus rendered familiar_, Act V. 5. - - _is troubled_, Act V. 3. - - _subject_ [servile] _to all the skyey influences_. _Measure for - Measure_, Act III. 1. - - _My way of life_, Act V. 3. - - 194. _the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’_ by John Gay (1685–1732), first acted - January 29, 1728. See _The Round Table_, pp. 65–66. - - _Lillo’s murders._ George Lillo, dramatist (1693–1739), author of - _Fatal Curiosity_ and _George Barnwell_. See note to p. 154. - - _Lamb’s Specimens of Early [English] Dramatic Poets_, 1808. See - Gollancz’s edition, 2 vols., 1893, vol. I. pp. 271–272. - - _the Witch of Middleton._ Thomas Middleton (?1570–1627). It is - not known whether the date of the _Witch_ is earlier or later - than that of _Macbeth_. - - - JULIUS CÆSAR - - 195. _the celebrated Earl of Hallifax._ Charles Montague, Earl of - Halifax (1661–1715), poet and statesman. _King and no King_, - licensed 1611, printed 1619; _Secret Love, or, the Maiden - Queen_, first acted 1667, printed the following year. - - _Thou art a cobler_ [but with awl. I] and _Wherefore rejoice_, - Act I. 1. - - 196. _once upon a raw_ and _The games are done_, Act I. 2. - - 197. _And for Mark Antony_, and _O, name him not_, Act II. 1. - - 198. _This disturbed sky_, Act I. 3. - - _All the conspirators_, Act V. 5. - - _How ‘scaped I killing_, Act IV. 3. - - _You are my true_, Act II. 1. - - 199. _They are all welcome_ and _It is no matter_, Act II. 1. - - - OTHELLO - - 200. _tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity_, Aristotle’s - _Poetics_. - - _It comes directly home_, Dedication to Bacon’s _Essays_. - - _The picturesque contrasts._ The germ of this paragraph may be - found in _The Examiner_ (_The Round Table_, No. 38), May 12th, - 1816. The paper there indexed as _Shakespeare’s exact - discrimination of nearly similar characters_ was used in the - preparation of _Othello_, _Henry IV._ and _Henry VI._ in the - _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_. - - 202. _flows on to the Propontic_, Act III. 3. - - _the spells_, Act I. 3. - - _What! Michael Cassio?_ and _If she be false_, Act III. 3. - - 203. _Look where he comes_, Act III. 3. The four following quotations - in the text and footnote are in the same scene. - - [I found not Cassio’s kisses - ... thy hollow cell.] - - _Yet, oh the pity of it_, Act IV. 2. - - _My wife!_ Act V. 2. - - 204. _his whole course of love_, Act I. 3. - - _’Tis not to make me jealous_, Act III. 3. - - _Believe me_, Act III. 4. - - _I will, my Lord_, Act IV. 3. - - 205. _her visage._ Cf. ‘I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,’ Act I. 3. - - _A maiden never bold_, Act I. 3. - - _Tempests themselves_, Act II. 1. - - 205. _She is subdued_ and _honours and his valiant parts_, Act I. 3. - - _Ay, too gentle_, Act IV. 1. - - _remained at home_, Act I. 3. - - _Alas, Iago_, Act IV. 2. - - 206. _Would you had never seen him_, Act IV. 3. - - _Some persons._ See _The Round Table_, p. 15. - - 207. _Our ancient_, Dram. Per. ‘Iago, his ancient.’ - - _What a full fortune_, and _Here is her father’s house_, Act I. - 1. - - 208. _I cannot believe_, Act II. 1. - - _And yet how nature_, Act III. 3. - - _the milk of human kindness._ _Macbeth_, Act I. 5. - - _relish of salvation._ _Hamlet_, Act III. 3. - - _Oh, you are well tuned now_, Act II. 1. - - _My noble lord_, Act III. 3. - - 209. _O grace! O Heaven forgive_ [defend] _me_, Act III. 3. - - _How is it, General_, Act IV. 1. - - _Zanga._ See _The Revenge_, by Edward Young (1683–1765), first - acted 1721. - - - TIMON OF ATHENS - - 210. _Follow his strides_, Act I. 1. - - 211. _What, think’st thou_, Act IV. 3 [moss’d trees]. - - _A thing slipt_, Act I. 1. - - _Ugly all over with hypocrisy._ Cf. ‘He is ugly all over with the - affectation of the fine gentleman.’ Quoted by Steele from - Wycherley, _The Tatler_, No. 38. - - 212. _This yellow slave_, Act IV. 3. - - _Let me look_, Act IV. 1. - - 213. _What things in the world_, Act IV. 3. - - _loved few things better_, Act I. 1. - - _Come not to me_, Act V. 1. - - _These well express_, Act V. 4. - - - CORIOLANUS - - 214. _no jutting frieze_ and _to make its pendant bed_. _Macbeth_, Act - I. 6. - - _it carries noise_, Act II. 1. - - _Carnage is its daughter._ See Wordsworth’s _Ode_, No. XLV. of - Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, ed. - Hutchinson, 1895. The line was altered by Wordsworth in 1845. - See also Byron’s _Don Juan_, Canto viii. Stanza 9. - - 215. _poor_ [these] _rats_, Act I. 1. - - _as if he were a God_, Act II. 1. - - _Mark you_ and _cares_, Act III. 1. - - 216. _Now the red pestilence_, Act IV. 1. - - 217. _Methinks I hither hear_, Act I. 3 [At Grecian sword, - contemning]. - - _These are the ushers_, Act II. 1. - - _Pray now, no more_, Act I. 9. - - 218. _The whole history._ The sentence quoted is by Pope. See Malone’s - _Shakespeare_, 1821, vol. xiv. - - - TROILUS AND CRESSIDA - - 221. _Troy, yet upon her basis_, Act I. 3. - - 222. _without o’erflowing full._ Said of the Thames in _Cooper’s - Hill_, by Sir John Denham (1615–1669). - - 222. _of losing distinction in his thoughts_ [joys] and _As doth a - battle_, Act III. 2. - - 223. _Time hath, my lord_, Act. III. 3. - - 224. _Why there you touch’d_, Act II. 2. - - _Come here about me_, Act V. 7. - - _Go thy way_, Act I. 2. - - _It is the prettiest villain_, Act III. 2. - - 225. _the web of our lives._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act IV. 3. - - _He hath done_, Act V. 5. - - 226. _Prouder than when_, Act I. 3. - - _like the eye of vassalage_, Act III. 2 [like vassalage at - unawares encountering the eye of majesty]. - - _And as the new abashed nightingale_, Chaucer’s _Troilus and - Criseyde_, Book III. 177. - - 227. _Her armes small._ _Ibid._, 179. - - _O that I thought_, Act III. 2. - - _Rouse yourself_, Act III. 3. - - _What proffer’st thou_, Chaucer’s _Troilus and Criseyde_, Book - III. 209. - - - ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA - - 228. _like the swan’s down-feather_, Act III. 2. - - _If it be love indeed_, Act I. 1. - - 229. _The barge she sat in_, Act II. 2. - - _like a doating mallard_, Act III. 10. - - _He’s speaking now_, Act I. 5. - - _It is my birthday_ and _To let a fellow_, Act. III. 13. - - _Age cannot wither_, Act. II. 2 [stale]. - - _There’s gold_, Act. II. 5. - - 230. _Dost thou not see_, Act V. 2. - - _Antony, leave thy lascivious wassels_, Act I. 4. [_For_ Mutina - _read_ Modena.] - - _Yes, yes_, Act III. 11. - - 231. _Eros, thou yet behold’st me_, Act IV. 14. - - _I see men’s judgments_, Act III. 13. - - 232. _a master-leaver_, Act IV. 9. - - - HAMLET - - 232. _this goodly frame_ and _man delighted not_, Act II. 2. - - _too much i’ th’ sun._ Cf. Act II. 2. - - _the pangs of despised love_, Act III. 1. - - 233. _the outward pageants._ Cf. the trappings and the suits of woe, - Act I. 2. - - _we have that within_, Act I. 2. - - 234. _that has no relish of salvation_ and _He kneels and prays_ [now - might I do it pat, now he is praying], Act III. 3. - - _How all occasions_, Act IV. 4 [fust in us]. - - 235. _Whole Duty of Man_, 1659, a once-popular ethical treatise of - unknown authorship. - - _Academy of Compliments, or the whole Art of Courtship, being the - rarest and most exact way of wooing a Maid or Widow, by the way - of Dialogue or complimental Expressions._ London, 12mo. - Academies of Compliments were also published in 1655 and 1669. - - 236. _his father’s spirit_, Act I. 2. - - _I loved Ophelia_ and _Sweets to the sweet_, Act V. 1. - - _Oh rose of May_, Act IV. 5. - - _There is a willow_, Act IV. 7 [grows aslant]. - - 237. _a wave o’ th’ sea._ _The Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. 4. - - - THE TEMPEST - - 238. _Either for tragedy._ _Hamlet_, Act II. 2. Hazlitt alters the - words of Polonius to apply them to Shakespeare. - - _a deed without a name._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. 1. - - _does his spiriting gently_, Act I. 2. - - _to airy nothing._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V. 1. - - _semblably._ _The Second Part of King Henry VI._, Act V. 1. - - _worthy of that name._ Cf. Act III. 1. - - 239. _like the dyer’s hand._ _Sonnet_ CXI. - - ‘_the liberty of wit_’ ... _‘the law’ of the understanding_. Cf. - _Hamlet_, Act II. 2 [the law of writ and the liberty]. - - _of the earth, earthy._ _St. John_, iii. 31. - - _always speaks in blank verse_, Schlegel, p. 395. - - _As wicked dew_, Act I. 2. - - 240. _I’ll shew thee_, Act II. 2. - - _Be not afraid_, Act III. 2. - - 241. _I drink the air_, Act V. 1. - - _I’ll put a girdle_, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act II. 2. - - _Your charm_, Act V. 1. - - _Come unto these yellow sands_, Act I. 2. - - 242. _The cloud-capp’d towers_, Act IV. 1. - - _Ye elves of hills_, Act V. 1. - - 243. _Shakespear has anticipated._ The passage quoted is based on - Florio’s translation of Montaigne. See Chapter XXX. Book 1. _Of - the Caniballes_. - - _Had I the plantation_, Act II. 1. - - - THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM - -See _The Round Table_, pp. 61–64. - - 244. _This crew of patches_, Act III. 2. - - _He will roar_, Act I. 2. The two following quotations in the - text are in the same scene. - - _I believe we must leave_, Act III. 1. - - 245. _Write me a prologue_, Act III. 1. - - _with amiable cheeks_ and _Monsieur Cobweb_, Act IV. 1. - - _Lord, what fools_, Act III. 2. - - _the human mortals_, Act II. 1. - - _gorgons and hydras._ _Paradise Lost_, Book II. l. 628. - - _regarded him rather as a metaphysician._ Cf. ‘No man was ever - yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound - philosopher.’ Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_, Chap. XV. - - 246. _Be kind_, Act III. 1. - - _Go, one of you_, Act IV. 1. - - 247. _the most fearful wild-fowl_, Act III. 1. - - 247. _Liston_ acted in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ at Covent Garden, - January 17, 1816. See Genest’s _Some Account of the English - Stage_, VIII. 545–549. See also Hazlitt’s _A View of the - English Stage_, where a few of the same sentences used here - also occur. - - - ROMEO AND JULIET - - 248. _whatever is most intoxicating_, Schlegel, p. 400. - - _fancies_ [cowslips] _wan_. _Lycidas_, l. 147. - - 249. _We have heard it objected._ By Curran. See _post_, p. 393. - - _too unripe and crude._ Cf. _Lycidas_, l. 3, ‘harsh and crude.’ - - _the_ STRANGER. _Menschenhass und Reue_, by A.F.F. von Kotzebue - (1761–1819), adapted for the English stage under the title of - _The Stranger_. See note to p. 155. - - _gather grapes._ _St. Matthew_, vii. 16. - - _My bounty_, Act II. 2. - - 250. _they fade by degrees_, Wordsworth’s Ode, _Intimations of - Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood_, V. [fade - into the light]. - - _that lies about us._ _Ibid._ - - 251. _the purple light of love_, Gray’s _Progress of Poesy_, l. 41. - - _another morn risen on mid-day_ [mid-noon], _Paradise Lost_, V. - 310–311. - - _in utter nakedness_, Wordsworth’s _Ode_ (see above), V. - - _I’ve seen the day_, Act I. 5. - - _At my poor house_, Act I. 2. - - _But he_, Act I. 1. - - 252. _the white wonder_, Act III. 3. - - _What lady’s that_, Act I. 5. - - _But stronger Shakespear felt for man alone_, Collins’s _Epistle - to Sir Thomas Hanmer_. - - _Thou know’st the mask_, Act II. 2. - - 253. _calls_ [think] _true love spoken_ [acted] and _Gallop apace_, - Act III. 2. - - _It was reserved_, Schlegel, p. 400. - - 254. _Here comes the lady_, Act II. 6. - - _Ancient damnation_, Act III. 5. - - _frail thoughts._ _Lycidas_, 153 [false surmise]. - - _the flatteries_, Act V. 1. - - _What said my man_, Act V. 3. - - _If I may trust_, Act V. 1 [flattering truth of sleep]. - - 255. _Shame come to Romeo_ and _Blister’d be thy tongue_, Act III. 2. - - 256. _father, mother_, Act III. 2. - - _Let me peruse_, Act V. 3. - - 257. _as she would take_ [catch]. _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act V. 2. - - _The Beauties of Shakespear._ By Dr. Wm. Dodd (1729–1777), 1753. - - - LEAR - - 258. _Be Kent unmannerly_ and _Prescribe not_, Act I. 1. - - 259. _This is the excellent foppery_, Act I. 2. - - _the dazzling fence of controversy._ Cf. the ‘dazzling fence’ of - rhetoric, _Comus_, 790–791. - - 260. _beat at the gate, he has made_ and _Let me not stay_, Act I. 4. - - _How now, daughter._ _Ibid._ [much o’ the savour]. - - 263. _O let me not be mad_, Act I. 5. - - 264. _Vengeance_ and _Good-morrow to you both_, Act II. 4 [how this - becomes the house]. - - 268. _See the little dogs_, Act III. 6. - - _Let them anatomise Regan_, Act III. 6. - - _Nothing but his unkind daughters_, Act III. 4. - - _whether a madman_, Act III. 6. - - _Come on, sir_, Act IV. 6. - - _full circle home_, Act V. 3. - - 269. _Shame, ladies_, Act IV. 3. - - _Alack, ’tis he_, Act IV. 4. - - _How does my royal lord_, Act IV. 7. - - _We are not the first_, Act V. 3. - - 270. _And my poor fool_, Act V. 3. - - _Vex not his ghost_, Act V. 3 [this tough world]. - - _Approved of by Dr. Johnson._ See Malone’s _Shakespeare_, vol. X. - p. 290. - - _condemned by Schlegel._ See Schlegel, p. 413. - - _The Lear of Shakespear._ See Lamb’s _Miscellaneous Essays_, ed. - Ainger, 1884, p. 233. - - 271. [_For_ that rich sea _read_ that sea.] - - - RICHARD II. - - 273. _How long a time_, Act I. 3. - - _sighed his English breath_, Act III. 1. - - _The language I have learnt_, Act I. 3. - - _is hung armour_, Wordsworth’s Sonnet, _It is not to be thought - of_ (1802). - - _keen encounters._ _King Richard III._, Act I. 2. - - _If that thy valour_, Act IV. 1 [Till thou the lie-giver and that - lie do lie]. - - 275. _This royal throne of kings_, Act II. 1 [fear’d by their breed - and famous by their birth ... the envious siege]. - - 276. _Ourself and Bushy_, Act I. 4. - - _I thank thee_, Act II. 3. - - _O that I were a mockery king_, Act IV. 1. - - _it yearned his heart_, Act V. 5. - - _My lord, you told me_, Act V. 2 [scowl on gentle Richard]. - - - HENRY IV. - - 278. _we behold the fulness._ Cf. _Col._ ii. 9. - - _lards the lean earth._ _1 King Henry IV._, Act II. 2. - - _into thin air._ _The Tempest_, Act IV. 1. - - _three fingers_ [omit _deep_], Act IV. 2. - - _it snows of meat and drink._ _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 345. - - _ascends me into the brain_, Part II. Act IV. 3. - - _a sun of man_, Part I. Act II. 4. - - 279. _open, palpable_, Part I. Act II. 4 [like their father that - begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable]. - - _By the lord_, Part I. Act I. 2. - - 280. _But Hal_, Part I. Act I. 2. - - _who grew from four_ [two] _men_, Part I. Act II. 4. - - 281. _Harry, I do not only marvel_, Part I. Act II. 4 [purses? a - question to be asked]. - - 282. _What is the gross sum_ and _Marry, if thou wert an honest man_, - Part II. Act II. 1. - - 283. _Would I were with him._ _Henry V._, Act II. 3. - - _turning his vices_ [diseases], Part II. Act I. 2. - - _their legs_, Part II. Act II. 4. - - _a man made after supper_ and _Would, cousin Silence_, Part II. - Act III. 2. - - _I did not think Master Silence, in some authority_, and _You - have here_, Part II. Act V. 3. - - 284. _When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank_ and _By heaven_ [honour - from the pale-faced moon], Part I. Act I. 3. - - _Had my sweet Harry_, Part II. Act II. 3. - - - HENRY V. - - PAGE - - 285. _the_ [best] _king of good fellows_, Act V. 2. - - _plume up their wills._ _Othello_, Act I. 3. - - _the right divine_, Pope’s _Dunciad_, Book IV. 1. 188. - - 286. _when France is his_, Act I. 2. - - _O for a muse of fire_, Prologue. - - 287. _the reformation and which is a wonder_, Act I. 1. - - _And God forbid_, Act I. 2. - - 288. _the ill neighbourhood_, _For once the eagle England_, and _For - government_ [the act of order], Act I. 2. - - 289. _rich with_ [omit _his_] _praise_, Act I. 2. - - _O hard condition_, Act IV. 1. - - 290. _The Duke of York_, Act IV. 6. - - 291. _some disputations_, Act III. 2. - - - HENRY VI. - - 292. _flat and unraised._ _King Henry V._, Act I., Chorus. - - _Glory is like a circle_, Part I. Act I. 2. - - _yet tell’st thou not_, Part I. Act I. 4. - - 293. _Aye, Edward will use women honourably_, Part III. Act III. 2. - - _We have already observed._ See note to p. 200 for the source of - this paragraph. - - 294. _The characters and situations._ The material between these words - and _disappointed ambition_ (p. 297) formed part of an article - by Hazlitt in _The Examiner_ (see note to p. 200). - - _Edward Plantagenet_, Part III. Act II. 2. - - _mock not my senseless conjuration._ _Richard II._, Act III. 2 - [foul rebellion’s arms ... lift shrewd steel ... God for his - Richard]. - - 295. _But now the blood._ _Richard II._, Act III. 2. - - _cheap defence._ Cf. Burke: _Reflections on the Revolution in - France_, ‘the cheap defence of nations.’ - - _Awake, thou coward majesty_ [twenty thousand names] and _Where - is the duke_. _Richard II._, Act III. 2. - - 296. _what must the king do now._ _Richard II._, Act III. 3. - - _This battle fares_, Part III. Act II. 5. - - 297. _had staggered his royal person._ _Richard II._, Act V. 5. - - - RICHARD III. - - PAGE - - 298. _the character in which Garrick came out._ David Garrick - (1717–1779) appeared, October 19, 1741, at the theatre in - Goodman’s Fields. - - _the second character in which Mr. Kean appeared._ Edmund Kean - (1787–1833) appeared at Drury Lane as Shylock, January 26, - 1814, on February 1st as Shylock, on February 12th as Gloster - in Richard III. See _Some Account of the English Stage_, - Genest, vol. viii. pp. 407–408, 1832. See also Hazlitt’s _A - View of the English Stage_. - - _But I was born_, Act I. 3. - - 299. _Cooke._ George Frederick Cooke (1756–1811) acted Richard III. at - Covent Garden on September 20, 1809. See Genest’s _Some Account - of the English Stage_, viii. p. 178. - - 300. _Sir Giles Overreach_, in Massinger’s _A New Way to Pay Old - Debts_ (1620–33). For Hazlitt’s criticism of Kean’s acting in - this and the other characters referred to in the same paragraph - see his _A View of the English Stage_. - - _Oroonoko_, or the Royal Slave. A play (1696) by Thomas Southerne - (1660/1–1746) founded on a novel of Aphra Behn’s (1640–1689). - - _Cibber._ See note to p. 157. - - 301. _bustle in_, Act I. 1. - - _they do me wrong_, Act I. 3 [speak fair]. - - _I beseech your graces_, Act I. 1. - - 302. _Stay, yet look_, Act IV. 1 [rude, ragged nurse]. - - _Dighton and Forrest_, Act IV. 3. - - - HENRY VIII. - - 303. _Nay, forsooth_, Act III. 1. - - _Dr. Johnson observes_, Malone’s _Shakespeare_, vol. xix. p. 498. - - 304. _Farewell, a long farewell_, Act III. 2. - - _him whom of all men_, Act IV. 2. - - _while her grace sat down_, Act IV. 1. - - 305. _No maid could live near such a man._ Mr. P. A. Daniel suggests - that by a slip this remark has been said of Shakespeare instead - of Henry VIII. The emendation would make the paragraph read - thus: ‘It has been said of him [_i.e._ Henry VIII.]—“No maid - could live near such a man.” It might with as good reason be - said of Shakespear—“No king could live near such a man.”’ - - _the best of kings._ A phrase applied to Ferdinand VII. of Spain - in official documents. See _The Examiner_, September 25, 1814, - where the words are ironically italicised. - - - KING JOHN - - 306. _denoted a foregone conclusion._ _Othello_, Act III. 3. - - _To consider thus._ _Hamlet_, Act V. 1. - - 307. _Heat me these irons_, Act IV. 1. - - 310. _There is not yet_, Act IV. 3. - - _To me_, Act III. 1. - - _that love of misery_ and _Oh father Cardinal_, Act III. 4. - - 311. _Aliquando._ Ben Jonson’s _Discoveries_, LXIV., _De Shakespeare - Nostrati_. - - _commodity, tickling commodity_, Act II. 1. - - 312. _That daughter there_, Act II. 1 [niece to England]. - - _Therefore to be possessed_, Act IV. 2. - - - TWELFTH NIGHT - - 314. _high fantastical_, Act I. 1. - - _Wherefore are these things hid_, Act I. 3. - - _rouse the night-owl_ and _Dost thou think_, Act II. 3. - - _we cannot agree with Dr. Johnson._ See Dr. Johnson’s _Preface_, - before cited, p. 71. - - 315. _What’s her history_, Act II. 4. - - _Oh, it came o’er the ear_, Act I., 1 [the sweet sound]. - - _They give a very echo_, Act II. 4. - - _Blame not this haste_, Act IV. 3. - - 316. _O fellow, come_, Act II. 4. - - _Here comes the little villain_, Act II. 5 [drawn from us with - cars]. - - - THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA - - 318. _It is observable._ The note is by Pope. See Malone’s - _Shakespeare_, vol. iv. p. 3. - - _This whole scene._ Pope’s note is to Act I. 1. See Malone’s - _Shakespeare_, vol. iv. p. 13. - - _Why, how know you_, Act II. 1. - - 319. _I do not seek_, Act II. 7. - - _The river wanders_ [glideth] _at its_ [his] _own sweet will. - Sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge_, September 3, 1802. - - _And sweetest Shakespear._ _L’Allegro_, lines 133–134. - - [Or sweetest Shakespeare ... - Warble....] - - - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE - - 320. _Mr. Cumberland._ Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), dramatist. - - _baited with the rabble’s curse._ _Macbeth_, Act V. 8. - - _a man no less sinned against._ Cf. _King Lear_, Act III. 2. - - _the lodged hate_, Act IV. 1. - - _milk of human kindness._ _Macbeth_, Act I. 5. - - _Jewish gaberdine_, Act I. 3. - - _lawful_, Act IV. 1. - - _on such a day_, Act I. 3. - - 321. _I am as like_, Act I. 3. - - _To bait fish withal_, Act III. 1. - - _What judgment_, Act IV. 1. - - 322. _I would not have parted_, Act III. 1. - - _civil doctor_ and _On such a night_, Act V. 1. - - _conscience and the fiend_, Act II. 2. - - _I hold the world_, Act I. 1. - - 323. _How sweet the moonlight_, Act V. 1. - - _Bassanio and old Shylock_, Act IV. 1. - - 324. _’Tis an unweeded garden._ _Hamlet_, Act I. 2 [things rank, and - gross in nature, possess it merely]. - - - THE WINTER’S TALE - - 324. _We wonder that Mr. Pope._ See Pope’s _Preface_, Malone’s - _Shakespeare_, vol. i. p. 15. - - _Ha’ not you seen_, Act I. 2. - - 325. _Is whispering nothing?_ Act I. 2. - - 326. _Thou dearest Perdita_, Act IV. 4. - - 329. _Even here undone_, Act IV. 4. - - - ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL - - 330. _Oh, were that all_, Act I. 1. - - _The soul of this man_, Act II. 5. - - _the bringing off of his drum_, Act III. 6 and Act IV. 1. - - 331. _Is it possible_, Act IV. 1. - - _Yet I am thankful_, Act IV. 3. - - _Frederigo Alberigi and his Falcon_, Boccaccio’s _Decameron_, 5th - day, 9th story. - - 332. _the story of Isabella._ _Id._, 4th day, 5th story. - - _Tancred and Sigismunda._ _Id._, 4th day, 1st story. See also - Dryden’s _Sigismonda and Guiscardo_. - - _Honoria._ _Id._, 5th day, 8th story. See also Dryden’s _Theodore - and Honoria_. - - _Cimon and Iphigene._ _Id._, 5th day, 1st story. See also - Dryden’s _Cimon and Iphigenia_. - - _Jeronymo._ _Id._, 4th day, 8th story. - - _the two holiday lovers._ _Id._, 4th day, 7th story. - - _Griselda._ _Id._, 10th day, 10th story. - - - LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST - - 332. _the golden cadences of poesy_, Act IV. 2. - - _set a mark of reprobation_, Pope’s note to _The Two Gentlemen of - Verona_. Malone’s _Shakespeare_, vol. iv. p. 13. - - 333. _as too picked_, Act V. 1. - - _as light as bird from brake_ [brier]. _A Midsummer Night’s - Dream_, Act V. 1. - - _O! and I forsooth_, Act III. 1 [a humorous sigh ... This - senior-junior]. - - 334. _Oft have I heard_, Act V. 2 [your fruitful brain]. - - _the words of Mercury_, Act V. 2. - - - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - - 335. _Oh, my lord_, Act I. 1. - - _No, Leonato_, Act. IV. 1. - - 336. _She dying_, Act IV. 1 [the idea of her life]. - - _For look where Beatrice_ and _What fire is in mine ears_, Act - III. 1. - - 337. _Monsieur Love_ ... _This can be no trick_, Act II. 3. - - _Disdain and scorn_, Act III. 1. - - - AS YOU LIKE IT - - 338. _fleet the time_, Act I. 1. - - _under the shade_, Act II. 7. - - _who have felt_, Cymbeline, Act III. 2. - - _They hear the tumult_, Cowper’s _Task_, IV. 99–100, ‘I behold - the tumult, and am still.’ - - 339. _And this their life_, Act II. 1. - - _suck melancholy_, Act II. 5. - - _who morals on the time_, Act II. 7. - - _Out of these convertites_, Act V. 4. - - _In heedless mazes._ _L’Allegro_, 141–142. - - [With wanton heed and giddy cunning, - The melting voice through mazes running.] - - _For ever and a day_, Act IV. 1. - - 340. _We still have slept together_, Act I. 3. - - _And how like you_, Act III. 2. - - 341. _Blow, blow_, Act II. 7. - - _an If_, Act V. 4. - - _Think not I love him_, Act III. 5. - - - THE TAMING OF THE SHREW - - 342. _Think you a little din_, Act I. 2. - - _I’ll woo her_, Act II. 1. - - 343. _Tut, she’s a lamb_, Act III. 2. - - 344. _Good morrow, gentle mistress_, Act IV. 5. - - _The mathematics_, Act I. 1. - - _The Honey-Moon._ A successful play by John Tobin (1770–1804) - with a plot similar to that of _The Taming of the Shrew_, - produced at Drury Lane January 31, 1805. - - _Tranio, I saw her coral lips_, Act I. 1. - - 345. _I knew a wench_, Act IV. 4. - - _Indifferent well_, Act I. 1. - - _for a pot_ and _I am Christopher Sly_, Induc. Scene 2. - - _The Slies are no rogues_, Induc. Scene 1. - - - MEASURE FOR MEASURE - - 345. _The height of moral argument._ ‘The highth of this great - argument,’ _Paradise Lost_, I. l. 24. - - 346. _one that apprehends death_, Act IV. 2. - - _He has been drinking_, Act IV. 3. - - _wretches_, Schlegel, p. 387. - - _as the flesh_, Act II. 1. - - _A bawd, sir?_ and _Go to, sir_, Act IV. 2. - - 347. _there is some soul of goodness._ _Henry V._, Act IV. 1. - - _Let me know the point_, Act III. 1. - - 348. _Reason thus with life_, Act III. 1. - - - THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR - - PAGE - - 349. _commanded to shew the knight._ Cf. Schlegel, p. 427. - - 350. _some faint sparks._ _Hamlet_, Act V. 1 [your flashes ... the - table on a roar]. - - _to eat._ _2 Henry IV._, Act II. 1. - - _to be no more so familiarity._ _2 Henry IV._, Act II. 1. - - _an honest_, Act I. 4. - - _very good discretions._ Cf. Act I. 1. - - _cholers_, Act III. 1. - - - THE COMEDY OF ERRORS - - 352. _How long hath this possession_, Act V. 1. - - 353. _They brought one Pinch_, Act V. 1. - - - DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR - - 353. _All the editors_, Schlegel, p. 442. - - _at the blackness_, Schlegel, see above. - - 357. _a lasting storm._ _Per._, IV. 1 [whirring me from my friends]. - - - POEMS AND SONNETS - - 358. _as broad and casing._ _Macbeth_, Act III. 4 [broad and general - as the casing air]. - - _cooped._ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act III. 4 [cabined, cribbed, confined]. - - _glancing from heaven._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V. 1. - - 359. _Oh! idle words._ _Lucrece_, ll. 1016–1122 [Out, idle words, be - you mediators]. - - _Round hoof’d._ _Venus and Adonis_, ll. 295–300. - - _And their heads._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act IV. 1. - - 360. _Constancy._ _Sonnet_ XXV. - - _Love’s Consolation._ _Sonnet_ XXIX. - - _Novelty._ _Sonnet_ CII. [stops her pipe]. - - 361. _Life’s Decay._ _Sonnet_ LXXIII. - - - A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. - -William Gifford (1756–1826), the son of a glazier, after a neglected -childhood, during which he was at one time apprenticed to a shoemaker, -entered Exeter College, Oxford, through the kindness of a friend, and -graduated in 1782. His two satires, _The Baviad_ (1791) and _The Mæviad_ -(1795), were published together in 1797, and his translation of Juvenal, -upon which he had been working since he left Oxford, in 1802. He became -editor of _The Anti-Jacobin_ (1797), and was the first editor -(1809–1824) of _The Quarterly Review_. He published a translation of -Persius in 1821, and editions of some of the old dramatists: Massinger -(1805), Ben Jonson (1816), Ford (1827), and Shirley (completed by Dyce, -1833). In _The Examiner_ for June 14, 1818, appeared a ‘Literary -Notice,’ entitled ‘The Editor of the Quarterly Review,’ which Hazlitt -incorporated in the present ‘Letter.’ - - 366. ‘_False and hollow_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 112 _et seq._ - - _Ackerman’s dresses for May._ Rudolf Ackerman’s (1764–1834) - _Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures_, - _etc._, was issued periodically between 1809 and 1828. - - _Carlton House._ The residence of the Prince Regent. It was - pulled down in 1826. - - 367. _A Jacobin stationer._ Hazlitt refers to the case of William Paul - Rogers, a Chelsea stationer, who for taking an active part in a - petition for reform was deprived of the charge of a letter-box. - Leigh Hunt referred to the case in _The Examiner_ for February - 7, 1819 (not February 9, as Hazlitt says), and opened a - subscription list for Rogers. The two clergymen referred to - took an active part against Rogers. Wellesley, a brother of the - Duke of Wellington, was Rector of Chelsea, and Butler had a - school there. - - ‘_The tenth transmitter._’ - - ‘No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.’ - - Richard Savage’s _The Bastard_, l. 7. - - 368. _Ultra-Crepidarian._ Leigh Hunt published a satire on Gifford - entitled _Ultra-Crepidarius_ in 1823, but the phrase was - invented for Gifford, Leigh Hunt says in his preface, ‘by a - friend of mine ... one of the humblest as well as noblest - spirits that exist.’ This was perhaps Lamb. - - 370. _Your account of the first work._ In _The Quarterly Review_, - April 1817 (vol. xvii. p. 154). - - _Albemarle Street hoax._ John Murray (1778–1843), the founder and - publisher of _The Quarterly Review_, purchased No. 50 Albemarle - Street in 1812. - - 372. ‘_Secret, sweet and precious._’ - - ‘The landlady and Tam grew gracious - Wi’ secret favours, sweet and precious.’ - - Burns, _Tam o’Shanter_. - - 373. ‘_Two or three conclusive digs_,’ _etc._ From a passage in Leigh - Hunt’s essay ‘On Washerwomen’ referred to by Gifford. - - Note. ‘_The milk of human kindness._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5. - - 374. _Earl Grosvenor._ Gifford was for a time tutor in Lord - Grosvenor’s family. - - ‘_Their gorge did not rise._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1. - - ‘_You assume a vice_,’ _etc._ - - ‘Assume a virtue, if you have it not.’ - - _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - _In the ‘Examiner.’_ February 25, 1816. - - 375. _How little knew’st thou of Calista!_ - - ‘O, thou hast known but little of Calista!’ - - Rowe’s _The Fair Penitent_, Act IV. Scene 1. - - _Anne Davies._ Gifford bequeathed £3000 to her relatives. In - addition to the epitaph quoted in the text he wrote an elegy on - her, beginning, ‘I wish I was where Anna lies,’ which is - referred to in Hazlitt’s character of Gifford in _The Spirit of - the Age_. - - 376. ‘_Other such dulcet diseases._’ _As You Like It_, Act V. Scene 4. - - ‘_Compunctious visitings of Nature_.’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5. - - ‘_You are well tuned now_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act II. Scene 1. - - ‘_Made of penetrable stuff._’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - ‘_Stuffed with paltry, blurred sheets._’ Burke’s _Reflections on - the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 101). - - Note 1. ‘_It is easier_,’ _etc._ _St. Matthew_, xix. 24. - - 377. _The Admiralty Scribe._ John Wilson Croker (1780–1857), who - contributed two hundred and sixty articles to _The Quarterly - Review_, was Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. - - _His ‘Feast of the Poets.’_ Published in 1814. - - 378. _Thus painters write their names at Co._ From Prior’s - _Protogenes_ and _Apelles_. Burke quoted the line in his - _Regicide Peace_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, p. 94). - - _For this passage_, _etc._ Leigh Hunt and his brother John were - in prison for two years from February 1813 for a libel on the - Prince Regent in _The Examiner_ (March 22, 1812). Leigh Hunt - was sent, not to Newgate, but to the Surrey Gaol in Horsemonger - Lane, where he wrote _The Descent of Liberty: A Masque_, and - the greater part of _The Story of Rimini_. Gifford’s review of - _Rimini_ appeared in _The Quarterly Review_ for Jan. 1816 (vol. - xiv. p. 473). - - 378. _Yet you say somewhere._ In the review of Hazlitt’s _Lectures on - the English Poets_ (_Quarterly Review_, July 1818, vol. xix. at - p. 430). - - Note. _Mary Robinson_ (1758–1800), known as ‘Perdita,’ from her - having captivated the Prince of Wales while she was acting in - that part in 1778. On being deserted by him she devoted herself - to literature, and became one of the Della Cruscan School - ridiculed by Gifford. Hazlitt refers to Gifford’s _Baviad_, ll. - 27–28:— - - ‘See Robinson forget her state, and move - On crutches tow’rds the grave, to “Light o’ Love.”’ - - _Put on the pannel_, _etc._ ‘If I can help it, he shall not be on - the inquest of my _quantum meruit_.’ Burke’s _A Letter to a - Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 114). Note. _Mr. Sheridan once - spoke._ See speech of March 7, 1788 (_Parl. Hist._, vol. - xxvii.). - - 379. John Hoppner (1758–1810), the portrait-painter. - - Charles Long (1761–1838), paymaster-general, created Baron - Farnborough in 1826. - - 380. ‘_From slashing Bentley_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Prologue to the - Satires_, l. 164. - - 381. ‘_It was Caviare to the multitude._’ ‘’Twas caviare to the - general.’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2. - - Note. _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2. - - 382. _An Essay on the Ignorance of the Learned._ Republished in _Table - Talk_, from _The Scots Magazine_ (New Series), iii. 55. - - 384. _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine._ Founded by William Blackwood - (1776–1834) in 1817. - - _You have tried it twice since._ That is, in his reviews of - _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_ (January 1818, vol. xviii. - p. 458) and of _Lectures on the English Poets_ (July 1818, vol. - xix. p. 424). - - 385. _Be noticed in the Edinburgh Review._ By Jeffrey, July 1817 (vol. - xxviii. p. 472). ‘_Dedicate its sweet leaves._’ - - ‘Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, - Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.’ - - _Romeo and Juliet_, Act I. Scene 1. - - 386. ‘_This is what is looked for_,’ _etc._ _Twelfth Night_, Act III. - Scene 2. - - ‘_They keep you as an ape_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 2. - - _You ‘have the office,’_ _etc._ - - ‘——You, mistress, - That have the office opposite to Saint Peter, - And keep the gate of hell!’ - - _Othello_, Act IV. Scene 2. - - 386. _You ‘keep a corner,’_ _etc._ - - ‘Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads - To knot and gender in.’ - - _Othello_, Act IV. Scene 2. - - ‘_Lay the flattering unction._’ - - ‘Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.’ - - _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4. - - 387. _The authority of Mr. Burke._ Burke refers to Henry VIII. as ‘one - of the most decided tyrants in the rolls of history,’ and - speaks of ‘his iniquitous proceedings’ ‘when he resolved to rob - the abbies.’ _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (_Select - Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 136–137). See also a passage in _A - Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 131 _et seq._). - - _With Mr. Coleridge in his late Lectures._ Hazlitt probably - refers to _The Statesman’s Manual_ (1816). See _Political - Essays_. - - ‘_Truth to be a liar._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2. - - ‘_Speak out, Grildrig._’ See Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_ (Voyage - to Brobdingnag). - - 388. ‘_The insolence of office_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1. - - _Those ‘who crook,’_ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2. - - _Spa-fields._ Where the famous meeting of reformers had recently - (December 2, 1816) been held. - - _A seditious Sunday paper._ _The Examiner_ was published on - Sunday. - - _Mr. Coleridge’s ‘Conciones ad Populum.’_ Two anti-Pittite - addresses published in 1795. - - 389. ‘_The pride, pomp_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3. - - ‘_One murder makes a villain_,’ _etc._ From Bishop Porteus’s - prize poem _Death_ (1759). - - 390. _The still sad music of humanity._ Wordsworth’s _Lines composed a - few miles above Tintern Abbey_. - - 391. _You have forgotten Mr. Burke_, _etc._ See _Letters on a Regicide - Peace_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, iii. p. 50). - - ‘_Go to_,’ _etc._ - - ‘Go to, Sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale.’ - - _Measure for Measure_, Act IV. Scene 2. - - ‘The weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois.’ - - _2 Henry IV._, Act III. Scene 4. - - ‘_Cinque-spotted_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act II. Scene 3. - - Note. ‘_Carnage is the daughter of humanity._’ See note to p. 214 - and _Notes and Queries_, 9th series, ii. 309, 398; iii. 37. - - 392. _Red-lattice phrases._ Alehouse language. See _Merry Wives of - Windsor_, Act II. Scene 2. - - 393. _Such ‘welcome and unwelcome things.’_ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Scene - 3. - - _The objection to ‘Romeo and Juliet.’_ See _ante_, p. 249. - Hazlitt refers to the criticism of _Paradise Lost_ in his - Lecture on Shakspeare and Milton (_Lectures on the English - Poets_). - - Note. Quoted from a review by Jeffrey in _The Edinburgh Review_, - August 1817 (vol. xxviii. at p. 473). - - 394. ‘_One of the most perfect_,’ _etc._ Quoted from Gifford’s review - of _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_ (vol. xviii. p. 458). - - _Ends of verse_, _etc._ - - ‘Chear’d up himself with ends of verse, - And sayings of philosophers.’ - - _Hudibras_, Part I. Canto iii. - - 394. _The geometricians and chemists of France._ Burke’s _A Letter to - a Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 142). - - ‘_Present to your mind’s eye._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 2. - - ‘_Holds his crown_,’ _etc._ Burke’s _Reflections on the - Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, ii. 17). - - 395. _The ingenious parallel_, _etc._ See _ante_, p. 171. - - _The article in the last Review._ _Quarterly Review_, July 1818 - (vol. xix, p. 424). - - 398. _We must speak by the card_, _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act V. Scene 1. - - _A knavish speech_, _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 2. - - _Shakespear says_, _etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3. - - 400. _The authority of Mr. Burke._ Hazlitt quotes inaccurately a - passage in Burke’s essay ‘On the Sublime and Beautiful,’ - _Works_ (Bohn), i. 81. - - _Emelie that fayrer_, _etc._ _Canterbury Tales_ (The Knightes - Tale, 1035–8). - - 401. _The only mistake._ The reference is probably to a passage in the - first edition, where Hazlitt says, ‘Prior’s serious poetry, as - his _Alma_, is as heavy, as his familiar style was light and - agreeable.’ Gifford quotes this passage and adds: ‘Unluckily - for our critic, Prior’s _Alma_ is in his lightest and most - familiar style, and is the most highly finished specimen of - that species of versification which our language possesses.’ In - the second edition Hazlitt substituted _Solomon_ for _Alma_. - - _Mr. Coleridge._ See _Biographia Literaria_, Chap, iii., note at - the end. Coleridge had already in the first number of the - Friend referred to this passage, which appeared in a footnote - by the editor of _The Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin_, and not in - _The Anti-Jacobin_ itself. See _Athenæum_, May 31, 1900. - - _Your predecessor._ Gifford was himself editor of the - _Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_, which appeared from - November 20, 1797, to July 9, 1798. - - 402. ‘_Dying, make a swan-like end._’ - - ‘Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, - Fading in music.’ - - _Merchant of Venice_, Act III. Scene 2. - - ‘_Being so majestical_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 1. - - ‘_Love is not love_,’ _etc._ Shakespeare, _Sonnet_ CXVI. - - 403. ‘_A writer of third-rate books._’ ‘He is a mere quack, Mr. - Editor, and a mere bookmaker; one of the sort that lounge in - third-rate book shops, and write third-rate books.’ From a - letter in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August 1818 (vol. iii. p. - 550). - - _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action._ Published in 1805. - - 408. _Mirabaud._ D’Holbach’s _Système de la Nature_ is wrongly - attributed to Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud (1675–1760), the - translator of Tasso. - - 409. ‘_On this bank and shoal of time._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 7. - ------ - -Footnote 87: - - _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act IV. Scene 14. - -Footnote 88: - - For Tramezzani and William Augustus Conway (1789–1828), who were not - favourites of Hazlitt, see _A View of the English Stage_. - -Footnote 89: - - _Paradise Lost_, IV. 299. - -Footnote 90: - - _Don Quixote_, Book III. Chap. xxv. - -Footnote 91: - - _The Canterbury Tales._ _The Wife of Bath’s Prologue_, ll. 593–599. - -Footnote 92: - - _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2. - -Footnote 93: - - Cobbett’s _Weekly Political Register_ for November 18, 1815 (vol. - xxix). Cobbett’s outburst against Milton and Shakespeare is headed ‘On - the subject of potatoes.’ - -Footnote 94: - - See _ante_, p. 116. - -Footnote 95: - - _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 159. - -Footnote 96: - - Probably the Letter from Paris, dated September 23, 1815, relating to - the disposal of the works of art acquired by Napoleon. - -Footnote 97: - - See _ante_, pp. 140–151. The _Catalogue_ appeared in _The Morning - Chronicle_ during the autumn of 1815 and the spring of 1816, beginning - on September 22, 1815. - -Footnote 98: - - The reference seems to be to Samuel Parr (1747–1825) and Charles - Burney (1757–1817). See Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Ignorance of the - Learned’ in _Table Talk_. - -Footnote 99: - - _2 Henry IV._, Act II. Scene 4. - -Footnote 100: - - _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act I. Scene 2. - -Footnote 101: - - _Political Register_, July 30, 1802. - -Footnote 102: - - See _The Faerie Queene_, II. xii. st. 86 and 87. - -Footnote 103: - - A variation, quoted from Burke (_A Letter to a Noble Lord_), of - Shakespeare’s well-known lines in _The Tempest_, Act IV. Scene 1. - -Footnote 104: - - For Burke on Rousseau see especially _A Letter to a Member of the - National Assembly_ (1791). - -Footnote 105: - - ‘I give you joy of the report, - That he’s to have a place at court.’ - ‘Yes, and a place he will grow rich in; - A turnspit in the royal kitchen.’ - - Swift, Miscell. Poems, _Upon the Horrid Plot_, etc. - - See Burke’s Speech (1780) on Economical Reform. - -Footnote 106: - - _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, - ii. 17). - -Footnote 107: - - See Southey’s _Carmen Triumphale_. - -Footnote 108: - - See the Notes to Southey’s _Carmen Triumphale_. - -Footnote 109: - - See _ante_, note to p. 45. - -Footnote 110: - - _Tristram Shandy_, IX. 26. - -Footnote 111: - - In the _Life of Napoleon_ Hazlitt refers to this saying, which he - calls ‘quackery.’ - -Footnote 112: - - ‘Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thorough-bred - metaphysician.’ _A Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_, Bohn, V. 141). - -Footnote 113: - - From the _Essay on Poetry_ of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. - - - Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty at the - Edinburgh University Press - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. No attempt was made to standardize inconsistencies in spelling such - as Shakespear, Shakespeare, and Shakspeare. - 2. Changed “dissoûte” to “dissoute” on p. xxxi. - 3. Changed “etoit” to “étoit” on p. 90. - 4. Changed “bonhommie” to “bonhomme” on p. 208. - 5. Silently corrected typographical errors. - 6. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. - 7. 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