amass; but he could not combine and arrange. Like a weak soldier under heavy armour, he is oppressed by his means of safety and triumph. He sinks beneath his knowledge, and cannot profably use it. The weakness of his judgment deprived the result of his industry of its proper effect. He acts on a right principle of criticism: but, ignorant of its right application, he employs it for the purposes of error. He was not, in short, formed of the costly materials of a critic; and no labour, against the inhibition of Nature, could fashion him into a critic. His page is pregnant with information: but it is thrown into so many involutions and tangles, that it is lighter labour to work it out of the original quarry than to select it amid the confusion in which it is thus brought to your hand. If any copy of indisputable authority had been in existence, Malone would have produced a fac-simile of it, and would thus, indeed, have been an-admirable editor of his author, for not a preposition, a copulative, a particle, a comma to be found in his original, would have been out of its place in his transcript. But no such authentic copy of Shakspeare could be discovered; and something more than diligence and accuracy was required in his editor: and to nothing more than diligence and accuracy could Malone's very humble and circumscribed abilities aspire. Attaching, therefore, fictitious authority to some of the earlier copies, he followed them with conscientious precision; and, disclaiming all emendatory criticism, he rejoiced in his fidelity to the errors of the first careless or illiterate transcriber. He closed the long file of the editors of Shakspeare. But although no formal editor or commentator has hitherto appeared to supply the place left vacant by Malone, yet does the importance of our bard continue to excite the man of talents to write in his cause, and to refresh the wreath of fame, which has hung for two centuries on his tomb. On this occasion I must adduce the name of Skottowe, a gentleman who has recently gratified the public with a life of Shakspeare, involving a variety of matter respecting him, in a style eminent for its compression and its neatness. To Mr. Skottowe I must acknowledge my especial obligations, for not infrequently relieving me from the prolixities and the perplexities of Malone; and

and their recurrence in cases were their aid seems to be unnecessary. Mr. Singer and I may occasionally differ in our opinions respecting the text, which he has adopted: but, in these instances of our dissent, it is fully as probable that I may be wrong as he. I feel, in short, confident, on the whole, that Mr. Singer is now advancing, not to claim, (for to claim is inconsistent with his modesty,) but to obtain a high place among the editors of Shakspeare; and to have his name enrolled with the names of those who have been the chief benefactors of the reader of our transcendent Poet.

We have now seen, from the first editorial attempt of Rowe, a whole century excited by the greatness of one man, and sending forth its most ambitious spirits, from the man of genius down to the literary mechanic, to tend on him as the vassals of his royalty, and to illustrate his magnificence to the world. Has this excitement had an adequate cause? or has it been only the frenzy of the times, or a sort of meteorous exhalation from an idle and over-exuberant soil? Let us examino our great poet, and dramatist, with the eye of impartial criticism; and then let the result of our examination form the reply to these interrogatories of doubt.

But

Shakspeare took his stories from any quarter, whence they were offered to him; from Italian novels; from histories; from old story-books ; from old plays; and even from old ballads. In one instance, and in one alone, no prototype has been found for his fiction; and the whole of "The Tempest," from its first moving point to the plenitude of its existence, must be admitted to be the offspring of his wonderful imagination.* whence soever he drew the first suggestion of his story, or whatever might be its original substance, he soon converts it into an image of ivory and gold, like that of the Minerva of Phidias; and then, beyond the efficacy of the sculptor's art, he breathes into it the breath of life. This, indeed, is spoken only of his tragedies and comedies: for his histories, as they were first called, or historical dramas, are transcripts from the page of Hall or Hollingshead; and, in some instances, are his workings on old plays, and belong to him no otherwise than as he imparted to them the powerful delineation of cha

sometimes for giving to me information in a com-racter, or enriched them with some exquisite scenes.

pendious and lucid form, like a jewel set in the rich simplicity of gold.

To

These pieces, however, which affect not the com-
bination of a fable; but, wrought upon the page of
the chronicler or of the elder dramatist, follow the
current of events, as it flows on in historic succes-
sion, must be made the first subjects of our re-
marks; and we will then pass to those dramas,
which are more properly and strictly his own.
these historical plays, then, whatever may be their
original materials, the power of the Poet has com-
municated irresistible attraction; not, as Samuel
Johnson would wish us to believe, "by being not
long soft or pathetic without some idle conceit or
contemptible equivocation:" not "by checking
and blasting terror and pity, as they are rising in
the mind, with sudden frigidity," but by the strong-
est exertions of the highest poetry; and by com-
manding, with the royalty of genius, every avenue
to the human heart. For the truth of what we
assert, we will make our appeal to the frantic and
soul-piercing lamentations of Constance in "King
John;" to the scene between that monarch and
Hubert; and between Hubert and young Arthur;

When I speak of Malone as the last of the editors of Shakspeare, I speak, of course, with reference to the time at which I am writing, when no later editor has shown himself to the world. But when I am placed before the awful tribunal of the Public, a new Editor of our great dramatist will stand by my side: who, whilst I can be only a suppliant for pardon, may justly be a candidate for praise. With Mr. SINGER, the editor in question, I am personally unacquainted; and till a period, long subsequent to my completion of the little task which I had undertaken, I had not seen a line of his Shakspearian illustrations. But, deeming it right to obtain some knowledge of the gentleman, who was bound on the same voyage of adventure, in the same vessel with myself, I have since read the far greater part of his commentary on my author; and it would be sunjust in me not to say, that I have found much in it to applaud, and very litttle to censure. Mr. Singer's antiquarian learning is accurate and extensive: his critical sagacity is considerable; and his judgment to the subsequent scene between Hubert and his

generally approves itself to be correct. He enters on the field with the strength of a giant; but with the diffidence and the humility of a child. We sometimes wish, indeed, that his humility had been less: for he is apt to defer to inferior men, and to be satisfied with following when he is privileged to lead. His explanations of his author are frequently happy; and sometimes they illustrate a passage, which had been left in unregarded darkness by the commentators who had preceded him. The sole fault of these explanatory notes (if such indeed can be deemed a fault) is their redundancy;

murderous sovereign, when the effects of the reported death of Arthur on the populace are described, and the murderer quarrels with his agent: to the scene, finally, in which the king dies, and which concludes the play.

For the evidence of the power of our great Poet we might appeal also to many scenes and descriptions even in "Richard II.;" though of all his historical dramas this, perhaps, is the least instinc

* This, perhaps, may be affirmed also of "A Mid summer Night's Dream."

with animation, and the least attractive with dra- | inimitable effect; and in the minor parts of the exmatic interest. Of "Richard II." we may say ecution of the drama, there is nothing among all

with Mr. Skottowe, that, "though it is an exquisite
poem, it is an indifferent play." But in the drama
which, in its historic order, succeeds to it, we re-
ceive an ample compensation for any failure of the
dramatist in "Richard II." In every page of "Henry
IV.," both the serious and the comic, Shakspeare "is
himself again;" and our fancy is either elevated
or amused without the interruption of a single dis-
cordant or uncharacteristic sentiment. Worcester,
indeed, says,

"And 'tis no little reason bids us speed
To save our heads by raising of a head,"

and is thus guilty of a quibble; an offence of which
the Prince, on two occasions, shows himself to be
capable; once when he sees Falstaff apparently
dead on the field of Shrewsbury; and once when,
on his accession to the throne, he appoints his
father's Chief Justice to a continuance in his high
office: and these, as I believe, are the sole in-
stances of our Poet's dalliance with his Cleopatra,
for whose love he was content to lose the world,
throughout the whole of the serious parts of this
long and admirable drama.

The succeeding play of "Henry V." bears noble testimony to the poetic and the dramatic supremacy of Shakspeare: to the former, more especially in its three fine choruses, one of them serving as the prologue to the play, one opening the third act, and one describing the night preceeding the battle of Agincourt: to the latter, in every speech of the King's, and in the far greater part of the remaining dialogue, whether it be comic or tragic. "Henry V.," however, is sullied with some weak and silly scenes; and, on the whole, is certainly inferior in dramatic attraction to its illustrious predecessor. But it is a very fine production, and far-far above the reach of any other English writer, who has been devoted to the service of the stage.

Of "Henry VI.," that drum and trumpet thing, as it has happily been called by a man of genius, who ranged himself with the advocates of Shakspeare, I shall not take any notice on the present occasion, as the three parts of this dramatized history are nothing more than three old plays, corrected by the hand of Shakspeare, and here and there illustrious with the fire-drops which fell from his pen. Though we consider them, therefore, as possessing much attraction, and as disclosing Shakspeare in their outbreaks of fine writing, and in their strong characteristic portriature, we shall now pass them by to proceed without delay to their dramatic successor, "Richard III." Of "Richard II," fine as it occasionally is in poetry, and rich in sentiment and pathos, we have remarked that, with reference to the other productions of its great author, it was low in the scale of merit. In "Richard II." he found an insufficient and an unawakening subject for his genius, and it acted drowsily, and as if it were half asleep: but in the third Richard there was abundant excitement for all its powers; and the victim of Tudor malignity and calumny rushes from the scene of our mighty dramatist in all the black efficiency of the demoniac tyrant. Besides Sir Thomas More's history of Richard of Gloster, our Poet had the assistance, as it seems, of a play upon the same subject, which had been popular before he began his career upon the stage. Adhering servilely neither to the historian nor to the old dramatist, Shakspeare contented himself with selecting from each of them such parts as were suited to his purpose; and with the materials thus obtained, compounded with others supplied by his own invention, he has produced a drama, which cannot be read in the closet, or seen in its representation on the stage without the strongest agitation of the mind. The character of Richard is drawn with

the creations of poetry more splendid and terrific than the dream of Clarence. But this noble effort of the tragic power is not altogether faultless. Some of its scenes, as not promoting the action of the drama, are superfluous and even tedious; and the violation of history, for the purpose of introducing the deposed queen, Margaret, upon the stage, may reasonably be censured. I am not certain, however, that I should be satisfied to resign her on the requisition of truth. Her curses are thrilling, and their fulfilment is awful. Shakspeare, as it may be remarked, has accumulated uncommitted crimes on the head of the devoted Richard. By the historian, this monarch is cleared of the deaths of Clarence and of Anne, his wife: to the latter of whom he is said to have approved himself an affectionate husband; whilst the murder of Clarence is imputed to the intrigues of the relations of his sister-in-law, the queen. His hand certainly did not shed the blood of the pious Henry; and even his assassination of the two illegitimate sons of his brother, Edward, is supported by very questionable evidence, for there is reason to think that the eldest of these young princes walked at his uncle's coronation; and that the youngest escaped to meet his death, under the name of Perkin Warbeck, from the hand of the first Tudor. But the scene of Shakspeare has stamped deeper and more indelible deformity on the memory of the last sovereign of the house of York, than all the sycophants of the Tudors had been able to impress; or than all that the impartiality, and the acute research of the modern historian have ever had the power to erase. We are certain that Richard possessed a lawful title to the throne which he filled: that he was a wise and patriotic sovereign: that his death was a calamity to his country, which it surrendered to a race of usurpers and tyrants, who trampled on its liberties, and stained its soil with much innocent and rich blood: -to that cold-blooded murderer and extortioner, Henry VII.-to that monster of cruelty and lust, his ferocious son: to the sanguinary and ruthless bigot, Mary: to the despotic and unamiable Elizabeth; the murderess of a suppliant queen, of kindred blood, who had fled to her for protection. Such was the result of Bosworth's field, preceded, as it was on the stage of Shakspeare, by visions of bliss to Richmond, and by visions of terror to Richard. But Shakspeare wrote with all the prejudices of a partisan of the Tudors; and at a time also when it was still expedient to flatter that detestable family.

His next task was one of yet greater difficulty:to smooth down the rugged features of the eighth Henry, and to plant a wreath on the brutal and blood-stained brow of the odious father of Elizabeth. This task he has admirably executed, and without offering much violation to the truth of history. He has judiciously limited his scene to that period of the tyrant's reign in which the more disgusting deformities of his character had not yet been revealed to the death of Catharine, the fall of Wolsey, and the birth of Elizabeth: and the crowned savage appears to us only as the generous, the munificent, the magnanimous monarch, striking down the proud, and supporting with a strong arm the humble and the oppressed. But the whole pathos and power of the scene are devoted to Catharine and Wolsey. On these two characters the dramatist has expended all his force; and our pity is inseparably attached to them to the last moment of their lives. They expire, indeed, bedewed with our tears. Of this, the last of Shakspeare's dramatic histories, it may be remarked that it is written in a style different from that of its predecessors: that it is less interspersed with comic scenes; that in its serious parts its diction is more stately and formal; more elevated and figurative: that its figures are longer and more consistently sustained: that it is more rich in theatric exhibition, or in the spectacle, as Aristotle calls it, and by whom it is

regarded as a component part of the drama. To any attentive reader these distinguishing characters of the dramatic history of Henry VIII. must be sufficiently obvious; and we can only wonder that the same mind should produce such fine pieces as those of "Henry IV.," " Richard III.," and "Henry VIII.," each written with a pen appropriate to itself, and the last with a pen not employed in any other instance.

"facies non omnibus una;

Nec diversa tamen."

If we were to pause in this stage of our progress, we might confidently affirm that we had suggested to the minds of our readers such a mass of poetic and dramatic genius as would be sufficient to excite the general interest of an intellectual and literary people. But we are yet only in the vestibule which opens into the magnificence of the palace, where Shakspeare is seated on the throne of his great-known valour; of playful wit, delighting itself in

ness. The plays, which we have hitherto been considering, are constructed, for the most part, with materials not his own, supplied either by the ancient chronicler, or by some preceding dramatist; and are wrought up without any reference to that essential portion of a drama, a plot or fable. But when he is disengaged from the incumbrances to which he had submitted in his histories, he assumes the full character of the more perfect dramatist; and discovers that art, for which, equally with the powers of his imagination, he was celebrated by Ben Jonson. In some of his plays, indeed, we acknowledge the looseness with which his Fable is combined, and the careless hurry with which he accelerates its close: but in the greater triumphs of his genius, we find the fable artificially planned and solidly constructed. In "The Merchant of Venice," in "Romeo and Juliet," in "Lear," in "Othello," and, above all, in that intellectual wonder, "The Tempest," we may observe the fable managed with the hand of a master, and contribu

To illustrate what I mean, let us contemplate Portia, Desdemona, Imogen, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cordelia, and Ophelia. They are equally amiable and affectionate women; equally faithful and attached as wives, as friends, as daughters: two of them, also, are noted for the poignancy and sparkle of their wit: and yet can it be said that any one of them can be mistaken for the other; or that a single speech can with propriety be transferred from the lips of her to whom it has been assigned by her dramatic creator? They are all known to us as the children of one family, with a general resemblance, and an individual discrimination. Benedict and Mercutio are both young men of high birth; of pleasantry and frolic: yet are they not distinguished beyond the possibility of their being confounded? So intimately conversant is our great dramatist with the varieties of human nature, that he scatters character, as a king on his accession scatters gold, among the populace; and there is not one, perhaps, of his subordinate agents, who has not his peculiar features and a complexion of his own. So mighty is our Poet as a dramatic creator, that characters of the most opposite description are thrown in equal perfection and with equal facility from his hand. The executive decision of Richard; the meditative inefficiency of Hamlet; the melancholy of Jaques, which draws subjects of moral reflection from every object around him; and the hilarity of Mercutio, which forsakes him not in the very act of dying; the great soul of Macbeth, maddened and bursting under accumulated guilt; and "the unimitated and inimitable Falstaff," (as he is called by S. Johnson, in the single outbreak of enthusiasm extorted from him by the wonders of Shakspeare's page) revell

ting its effect, with the characters and the dialogue, ing in the tavern at Eastcheap, or jesting on the to amuse, to agitate, or to surprise. In that beau- field of Shrewsbury, are all the creatures of one

tiful pastoral drama, "As You Like It," the sudden disappearance of old Adam from the scene has been a subject of regret to more than one of the commentators: and Samuel Johnson wishes that the dialogue between the hermit, as he calls him, and the usurping duke, the result of which was the conversion of the latter, had not been omitted on the stage. But old Adam had fulfilled the purposes

plastic intellect, and are absolute and entire in their kind. Malignity and revenge constitute the foundation on which are constructed the two very dissimilar characters of Shylock and Iago. But there is something terrific and even awful in the inexorability of the Jew, whilst there is nothing but meanness in the artifices of the Venetian standardbearer. They are both men of vigorous and acute

of his dramatic existence, and it was, therefore, understandings: we hate them both; but our ha

properly closed. He had discovered his honest attachment to his young master, and had experienced his young master's gratitude. He was brought into a place of safety; and his fortunes were now blended with those of the princely exiles of the forest. There was no further part for him to act; and he passed naturally from the stage, no longer the object of our hopes or our fears. On the subject of S. Johnson's wish respecting the dialogue between the old religious man and the guilty duke, we may shortly remark, that nothing could have been more undramatic than the intervention of such a scene of dry and didactic morality, at such a crisis of the drama, when the minds of the audience were heated, and hurrying to its approaching close. Like Felix in the sacred history, the royal criminal might have trembled at the lecture of the holy man: but the audience, probably, would have been irritated or asleep. No! Shakspeare was not so ignorant of his art as to require to be instructed in it by the author of Irene.

But it was in the portraiture of the human mind: in the specific delineation of intellectual and moral man, that the genius of Shakspeare was pre-eminently conspicuous. The curious inquisition of his eye into the characters, which were passing beneath its glance, cannot be made too much the subject of our admiration and wonder. He saw them not only under their broad distinctions, when they became obvious to the common observer; but he beheld them in their nicer tints and shadings, by which they are diversified, though the tone of their general colouring may be the same.

tred of the former is mingled with involuntary respect; of the latter our detestation is made more intensely strong by its association with contempt.

In his representation of madness, Shakspeare must be regarded as inimitably excellent; and the picture of this last degradation of humanity, with nature always for his model, is diversified by him at his pleasure. Even over the wreck of the human mind he throws the variegated robe of character. How different is the genuine insanity of Lear from the assumed insanity of Edgar, with which it is immediately confronted; and how distinct, again, are both of these from the disorder which prevails in the brain of the lost and the tender Ophelia.

In one illustrious effort of his dramatic power, our Poet has had the confidence to produce two delineations of the same perversion of the human heart, and to present them, at once similar and dissimilar, to the examination of our wondering eyes. In Timon and Apemantus is exhibited the same deformity of misanthropy: but in the former it springs from the corruption of a noble mind, stricken and laid prostrate by the ingratitude of his species: in the latter, it is a noisome weed, germinating from a bitter root, and cherished by perverse cultivation into branching malignity, In each of them, as the vice has a different parentage, so has it a diversified aspect.

With such an intimacy with all the fine and subtle workings of Nature in her action on the human heart, it is not wonderful that our great dramatist should possess an absolute control over the passions; and should be able to unlock the cell of each ages which are yet to come. The great Milton's imagination alone can be placed in competition with that of Shakspeare; and even Milton's must yield the palm to that which is displayed in “A Midsummer Night's Dream," and in the almost divine "Tempest."

or

But having sported a while with the fairies, "as on the sands with printless feet

They chase the ebbing Neptune,"

of them as the impulse of his fancy may direct. the loftiest aspirations of the human mind in the When we follow Macbeth to the chamber of Duncan: when we stand with him by the enchanted caldron; or see him, under the inffiction of conscience, glaring at the spectre of the blood-boltered Banquo in the possession of the royal chair, horror is by our side, thrilling in our veins, and bristling in our hair. When we attend the Danish prince to his midnight conference with the shade of his murdered father, and hear the ineffable accents of the dead, willing, but prohibited, "to tell the secrets of his prison-house," we are appalled, and our faculties are suspended in terror. When we see the faithful and the lovely Juliet awaking in the house of darkness and corruption with the corpse of her husband on her bosom: when we behold the innocent Desdemona dying by the hand, to which she was the most fondly attached; and charging on herself, with her latest breath, the guilt of her murderer: when we witness the wretchedness of Lear, contending with the midnight storm, and strewing his white locks on the blast; or carrying in his withered arms the body of his Cordelia murdered in his cause, is it possible that the tear of pity should not start from our eyes and trickle down our cheeks? In the forest of Arden, as we ramble with its accidental inmates, our spirits are soothed into cheerfulness, and are, occasionally, elevated into gaiety. In the tavern at Eastcheap, with the witty and debauched knight, we meet with "Laughter holding both his sides;" and we surrender ourselves, willingly and delighted, to the inebriation of his influence. We could dwell for a long summer's

" in the spiced Indian air, They dance their ringlets to the whistling wind," the mighty Poet turns from their bowers, "overcanopied with luscious woodbine," and plants us on "the blasted heath," trodden by the weird sisters, the Fates of the north or leads us to the dreadful cave, where they are preparing their infernal caldron, and singing round it the incantations of hell. What a change, from all that is fascinating, to all that is the most appalling to the fancy; and yet each of these scenes is the product of the same astonishing intellect, delighting at one time to lull us on beds of roses, with the spirit of Orpheus, and at another to curdle our blood by throwing at us the viper lock of Alecto. But to show his supreme command of the super-human world, our royal Poet touches the sepulchre with his magic rod, and the sepulchre opens "its pond'rous and marble jaws," and gives its dead to "revisit

day amid the fertility of these charming topics, if the glimpses of the moon." The belief that the we were not called from them to a higher region of dead, on some awful occasions, were permitted to poetic enjoyment, possessed by the genius of Shak-assume the semblance of those bodies, in which speare alone, where he reigns sole lord, and they had walked upon earth; or that the world of

where his subjects are the wondrous progeny of his own creative imagination. From whatever quarter of the world, eastern or northern, England may have originally derived her elves and her fairies, Shakspeare undoubtedly formed these little beings, as they flutter in his scenes, from an idea of his own; and they came from his hand, beneficent and friendly to man; immortal and invulnerable; of such corporeal minuteness as to lie in the bell of a cowslip; and yet of such power as to disorder the seasons; as

"to bedim

The noontide sun; call forth the mutinous winds:
And twixt the green sea and the azured vault,
Set roaring war."

To this little ethereal people our Poet has assigned
manners and occupations in perfect consistency
with their nature; and has sent them forth, in the
richest array of fancy, to gambol before us, to asto-
nish and delight us. They resemble nothing upon
earth: but if they could exist with man, they would
act and speak as they act and speak, with the inspi-
ration of our Poet, in "The Tempest," and "A
Midsummer Night's Dream." In contrast with his
Ariel, "a spirit too delicate," as the servant of a
witch, "to act her earthy and abhorred com-
mands:" but ready, under the control of his philo-
sophic master,

"To answer his best pleasure, be it to fly,
To swim; to dive into the fire; to ride
On the curl'd clouds;"

spirits was sometimes disclosed to the eye of mortality, has prevailed in every age of mankind, in the most enlightened as well as in the most dark. When philosophy had attained its widest extent of power, and had enlarged and refined the intellect, not only of its parent Greece, but of its pupil Rome, a spectre is recorded to have shaken the firmness of Dion, the scholar and the friend of Plato; and another to have assayed the constancy of the philosophic and the virtuous Brutus. In the superstitious age of our Elizabeth and of her Scottish successor, the belief in the existence of ghosts and apparitions was nearly universal; and when Shakspeare produced upon his stage the shade of the Danish sovereign, there was not, perhaps, a heart, amid the crowded audience, which did not palpitate with fear. But in any age, however little tainted it might be with superstitious credulity, would the ghost of royal Denmark excite an agitating interest, with such awful solemnity is he introduced, so sublimely terrible is his tale of woe, and such are the effects of his appearance on the persons of the drama, who are its immediate witnesses. We catch, indeed, the terrors of Horatio and the young prince; and if the illusion be not so strong as to seize in the first instance on our own minds, it acts on them in its result from theirs.

The melancholy, which previously preyed on the spirits of the youthful Hamlet, was certainly heightened into insanity by this ghostly conference; and from this dreadful moment his madness is partly assumed, and partly unaffected. It is certain that no spectre, ever brought upon the stage, can be compared with this phantom, created by the power of Shakspeare. The apparition of the host, in "The Lover's Progress," by Fletcher, is too contemptible to be mentioned on this occasion: the spirit of Almanzor's mother, in "The Conquest of Granada," by Dryden, is not of a higher class; and even the ghost of Darius, in "The Persians," of the mighty and sublime Æschylus, shrinks into insignificance before this of the murdered Majesty of Denmark. For his success, indeed, in this instance,

in contrast with this aerial being, the imagination of Shakspeare has formed a monster, the offspring of a hag and a demon; and has introduced him into the scene with a mind and a character appropriately and strictly his own. As the drama, into which are introduced these two beings, beyond the action of Nature, as it is discoverable on this earth, one of them rising above, and one sinking beneath the level of humanity, may be received as the proudest evidence, which has hitherto been pro- Shakspeare is greatly indebted to the superior awduced, of the extent and vigour of man's imagina-fulness of his religion; and the use which he has tion; so it bids fair to stand unrivalled amid all made of the Romish purgatory must be regarded as

supremely felicitous. When the imagination of instrument. The stream of passion, like a stream

Shakspeare sported without control amid these creations of its own, it unquestionably lifted him high above any competition. As he plays with the fairies in their bowers of eglantine and woodbine; er directs the operations in the magic cave; or calls the dead man from the "cold obstruction" of the tomb, " to make night hideous," he may challenge the poets of every age, from that of Homer to the present, and be fearless of the event. But either from his ignorance of them, which is not easily credible, or trom his disregard to them, or rather, perhaps, from his desire to escape from their yoke, he violates without remorse the dramatic unities of time and place, contenting himself to preserve the unity of action or design, without which, indeed, nothing worthy of the name of composition can exist. And who steps forward, in this instance of his licentious liberty, as the champion of Shakspeare, but that very critic who brings such charges against him as a poet and a dramatist, that, if they were capable of being substantiated, would overturn him from his lofty pedestal; and would prove the object of our homage, during two centuries, to be a little deformed image, which we bad with the most silly idolatry mistaken for a god? But Johnson's defence of Shakspeare seems to be as weak as his attack; though in either case the want of power in the warrior is concealed under the glare of his ostentations arms. It is unquestionable that, since the days of the patrician of Argos, recorded by Horace, who would sit for hours in the vacant theatre, and give his applause to actors who were not there, no man, unattended by a keeper, ever mistook the wooden and narrow platform of a stage for the fields of Philippi or Agincourt; or the painted canvass, shifting under his eye, for the palace of the Ptolemies or the Cæsars; or the walk, which had brought him from his own house to the theatre, for a voyage across the Mediterranean to Alexandria; or the men and women, with whom he had probably conversed in the common intercourse of life, for old Romans and Grecians. Such a power of illusion, quite incompatible with any degree of sanity of mind, has never been challenged by any critic, as attached to poetry and the stage; and it is adduced,

of electricity, rushes from the actor to us, and we are as unable as we are unwilling to resist it. Now it is this feeling, which constitutes the poetic probability of what we see and hear, and which may be violated by an injudicious and lawless shifting of the scene. If our passions be interested by an action passing at a place called Rome, it must shock and chill them to have our attentions hurried suddenly, without any reason for the discontinuance of the action, to a place called Alexandria, separated by the intervention of a thousand miles. Let us suppose, then, that in the fulness of the scenic excitement, a friend at our elbow, with the impassible fibre of a Johnson, were to shake us and to say, "What! are you mad? Know you not whero you are? in Drury Lane theatre? within a few hundred yards of your own chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and neither at Rome nor at Alexandria? and perceive you not that the old man whom you see there on his knee, with his hands clenched, and his eyes raised in imprecation to heaven, is our old friend, Garrick, who is reciting with much propriety some verses made by a man, long since in his grave? Yes! Garrick, with whom you conversed not many hours ago; and who, a few hours hence, will be talking with his friends, over a comfortablo supper, of the effects of his present mimickry?" If we should be thus addressed, (and a sudden shift. ing of the scene may produce an equal dissipation of the illusion which delights us,) should we be thankful to our wise friend for thus informing our understanding by the interruption of our feelings? Should we not rather exclaim with the Argive noble of Horace, when purged by hellebore into his senses,

- "Pol me occidisti
cui sic extorta voluptas

Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

in his accustomed style of argument, by Johnson, may be called its living principle, it has escaped

only for the purpose of confounding his adversaries with absurdity, or of baffling them with ridicule. But there is a power of illusion, belonging to genuine poetry, which, without overthrowing the reason, can scize upon the imagination, and make it subservient to its purposes. This is asserted by Horace in that often cited passago:

"Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire porta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet fal is terroribus implet

Ut magus; et nodo me Thebis inodo ponit Athenis."

Assisted by the scenery, the dresses of the actors, and their fine adaptation of the voice and countenance to the design of the poet, this illusion becomes so strong as intimately to blend us with the fictitious personages whom we see before us. We know, indeed, that we are seated upon benches, and are spectators only of a poetic fiction: but the power, which mingles us with the agents upon the stage, is of such a nature that we feel, as it were, one interest with them: we resent the injuries which they suffer, we rejoice at the good fortune which betides them: the pulses of our hearts beat in harmony with theirs; and as the tear gushes from their eyes, it swells and overflows in ours. To account for this influence of poetic imitation, for this contagion

With the illusion of the poetic or dramatic imita tion, established as an unquestionable truth in our minds, let us now turn and consider the dramatic unities in their origin and effect. The unity of action, indeed, may be thrown altogether from our notice; for, universally acknowledged to be essentially necessary to the drama, and constituting what from violation even by our lawless Poet himself. The drama, as we know, in Greece, derived its origin from the choral odes, which were sung at certain seasons before the altar of Bacchus. To these, in the first instance, was added a dialogue of two persons; and, the number of speakers being subsequently increased, a regular dramatic fable was, at length, constructed, and the dialogue usurped the prime honours of the performance. But the chorus, though degraded, could not be expelled from the scene, which was once entirely its own; and, consecrated by the regard of the people, it was forced upon the acceptance of the dramatist, to act with it in the best manner that he could. It was stationed, therefore, permanently on the stage, and made to occupy its place with the agents who were to conduct the action of the fable. From the circumstance of its being stationary on the stage, it secured the strict observance of the unity of place: for with a stage, which was never vacant, and consequently with only one scene, the Grecian dramatist could not remove his agents whithersoever he pleased, in accommodation to his immediate convenience; but on the spot, where the scene opened, he was constrained to retain them till the action of the drama was closed, and what could not consistently be acted was necessarily consigned to narration. This

of represented passion belongs to the metaphysi- was a heavy servitude to the dramatist; but it had

cian, the sole business of the critic is to remark and to reason from the fact. It is unquestionable that our imaginations are, to a certain extent, under the control of authentic poetry, and especially of that poetry which employs the scenic imitation for its

* Fuit haud ignobilis Argis, &c. Epis. lib. ii. Ep.

its compensations in uninterrupted feeling, and in the greater conservation of probability. To the unity of time, as time is more pliant to the imagination than place, the Grecian dramatist seems to have paid little if any regard. In the Agamemnon of Æschylus, the fire signals have only just announced to Mycense the fall of Troy, when the herald arrives with the tidings of the victorious