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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

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THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME ONE

All rights reserved

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.

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 SHAKSPEARE WAS INFLUENCED BY A LOVE OF IT?      [MAY 22, 1814.

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 THE EXCURSION      [AUG. 21, 28, 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 BRITISH INSTITUTION      [NOV. 10, 1816.

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 FRAGMENT      [JAN. 11, 15; 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.

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.

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.

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.’

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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.

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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.’)

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.’

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.’

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.

3.  Or rather bedgown: unction-soiled and laudanum-stained.

4.  John Hazlitt had been a pupil of Reynolds, and his miniatures were welcome at the Academy.

5.  Dans l’art il faut donner sa peau.

6.  He had a painter in him, whether imperfectly developed or not; for he would condescend upon none but Guido, Raphael, Titian.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

17.  Him Shelley calls ‘a solemn and unsexual man.’

18.  Much as years afterwards, according to a certain Nicolardot, the expertest of their kind were ‘on the list’ of old Ste.-Beuve.

19.  His grandson describes him as ‘physically incapable’ of any but a transient fidelity to anybody.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!’

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

33.  See also the passage in his prose works relating to the first design of Paradise Lost.

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!

35.  See an Essay on the genius of Hogarth, by C. Lamb, published in a periodical work, called the Reflector.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

42.  Is all this a rhodomontade, or literal matter of fact, not credible in these degenerate days?

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.

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.’

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.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

54.  ‘Je crois que l’imagination étoit la première de ses facultés, et qu’elle absorboit même toutes les autres.’—P. 80.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

60.  This word is not English.

61.  Written in 1806.

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.

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.

64.  A few alterations and corrections have been inserted in the present edition.

[Note by W. H. to Second Edition.]

65.  See the passage, beginning—‘It is impossible you should see this, were they as prime as goats,’ etc.

66.

‘Iago. Ay, too gentle.

Othello. Nay, that’s certain.’

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.’

68.  See an article, called Theatralia, in the second volume of the Reflector, by Charles Lamb.

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.

70.  The river wanders at its own sweet will.—WORDSWORTH.

71.  The lady, we here see, gives up the argument, but keeps her mind.

72.  See the Examiner, Feb. 9.

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.’

74.  ‘Undoubtedly the translator of Juvenal.’

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.

76.  A quotation of Mr. Gifford’s from Shakespeare. Yet he reproaches me with quoting from Shakespeare.

77.  To Apollo.

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.

79.  This word is not very choice English: the character is not English.

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.’

81.  ‘To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.’—SHAKSPEARE.

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.

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!

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.’

85.  You have spelt it wrong (Marocchius), on purpose for what I know.

86.  Quoted from the Edinburgh Review, No. 56.

87.  Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14.

88.  For Tramezzani and William Augustus Conway (1789–1828), who were not favourites of Hazlitt, see A View of the English Stage.

89.  Paradise Lost, IV. 299.

90.  Don Quixote, Book III. Chap. xxv.

91.  The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, ll. 593–599.

92.  Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

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.’

94.  See ante, p. 116.

95.  Œuvres, xxxv. p. 159.

96.  Probably the Letter from Paris, dated September 23, 1815, relating to the disposal of the works of art acquired by Napoleon.

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.

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.

99.  2 Henry IV., Act II. Scene 4.

100.  Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Scene 2.

101.  Political Register, July 30, 1802.

102.  See The Faerie Queene, II. xii. st. 86 and 87.

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.

104.  For Burke on Rousseau see especially A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).

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.

106.  Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 17).

107.  See Southey’s Carmen Triumphale.

108.  See the Notes to Southey’s Carmen Triumphale.

109.  See ante, note to p. 45.

110.  Tristram Shandy, IX. 26.

111.  In the Life of Napoleon Hazlitt refers to this saying, which he calls ‘quackery.’

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).

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.

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Table of Contents

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

EDITORS’ PREFACE

THE ROUND TABLE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EDITION OF 1817

CONTENTS

No. 1.] ON THE LOVE OF LIFE [Jan. 15, 1815.

No. 2.] ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION [Feb. 12, 1815.

No. 3.] ON THE TATLER [March 5, 1815.

No. 4.] ON MODERN COMEDY [Aug. 20, 1815.

No. 5.] ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO [July 24, 1814.

No. 6.] ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY [Nov. 27, 1814.

No. 7.] ON POSTHUMOUS FAME,—WHETHER SHAKSPEARE WAS INFLUENCED BY A LOVE OF IT? [May 22, 1814.

No. 8.] ON HOGARTH’S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE [June 5, 1814.

No. 9.] THE SUBJECT CONTINUED [June 19, 1814.

No. 10.] ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS [Aug. 6, 1815.

No. 11.] ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION [Aug. 20, 1815.

No. 12.] ON MANNER [Aug. 27, 1815. [Sep. 3, 1815.

No. 13.] ON THE TENDENCY OF SECTS [Sep. 10, 1815.

No. 14.] ON JOHN BUNCLE [Sept. 17, 1815.

No. 15.] ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM [Oct. 22, 1815.

No. 16.] ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM [Nov. 26, 1815.

No. 17.] ON THE BEGGAR’S OPERA [June 18, 1815.

No. 18.] ON PATRIOTISM.—A FRAGMENT [Jan. 5, 1814.

No. 19.] ON BEAUTY [Feb. 4, 1816.

No. 20.] ON IMITATION [Feb. 18, 1816.

No. 21.] ON GUSTO [May 26, 1816.

No. 22.] ON PEDANTRY [March 3, 1816.

No. 23.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [March 10, 1816.

No. 24.] ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU [April 14, 1816.

No. 25.] ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME [April 21, 1816.

No. 26.] CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL [May 19, 1816.

No. 27.] ON GOOD-NATURE [June 9, 1816.

No. 28.] ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON’S EVE [July 21, 1816.

No. 29.] OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM THE EXCURSION [Aug. 21, 28, 1814.

No. 30.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [Oct. 2, 1814.

No. 31.] CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. PITT[61]

No. 32.] ON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY [Oct. 9, 1814.

No. 33.] ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER [Oct. 28, 1813.

No. 34.] ON COMMON-PLACE CRITICS [Nov. 24, 1816.

No. 35.] ON THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION [Nov. 10, 1816.

No. 36.] THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED [Nov. 10, 17, 1816.

No. 37.] ON POETICAL VERSATILITY [Dec. 22, 1816.

No. 38.] ON ACTORS AND ACTING [Jan. 5, 1817.

No. 39.] ON THE SAME [Jan. 5, 1817.

No. 40.] WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE?—A FRAGMENT [Jan. 11, 15; Sep. 11, 1814.

CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CYMBELINE

MACBETH

JULIUS CÆSAR

OTHELLO

TIMON OF ATHENS

CORIOLANUS

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

HAMLET

THE TEMPEST

THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

ROMEO AND JULIET

LEAR

RICHARD II.

HENRY IV IN TWO PARTS

HENRY V.

HENRY VI. IN THREE PARTS

RICHARD III.

HENRY VIII.

KING JOHN

TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

THE WINTER’S TALE

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

AS YOU LIKE IT

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR

POEMS AND SONNETS

CONSTANCY

LOVE’S CONSOLATION

NOVELTY

LIFE’S DECAY

A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

NOTES

THE ROUND TABLE

ON THE LOVE OF LIFE

ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION

ON THE TATLER

ON MODERN COMEDY

ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO

ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY

ON POSTHUMOUS FAME

ON HOGARTH’S ‘MARRIAGE À LA MODE’

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED

ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS

ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION

ON MANNER

ON THE TENDENCY OF SECTS

ON JOHN BUNCLE

ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM

ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

ON PATRIOTISM—A FRAGMENT

ON BEAUTY

ON IMITATION

ON GUSTO

ON PEDANTRY

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU

ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME

CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL

ON GOOD NATURE

ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON’S EVE

OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM ‘THE EXCURSION’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. PITT

ON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY

ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER

ON COMMON-PLACE CRITICS

ON THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

ON POETICAL VERSATILITY

ON ACTORS AND ACTING

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE: A FRAGMENT

CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR’S PLAYS

CYMBELINE

MACBETH

JULIUS CÆSAR

OTHELLO

TIMON OF ATHENS

CORIOLANUS

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

HAMLET

THE TEMPEST

THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

ROMEO AND JULIET

LEAR

RICHARD II.

HENRY IV.

HENRY V.

HENRY VI.

RICHARD III.

HENRY VIII.

KING JOHN

TWELFTH NIGHT

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

THE WINTER’S TALE

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

AS YOU LIKE IT

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR

POEMS AND SONNETS

A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES