FROM 1780 CYCLOPEDIA OF has called up twilight from earth and placed it in the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments heaven. From that high mount of God whence light and shade Spring forth, the face of brightest heaven had changed To grateful twilight.-[Paradise Lost, v. 643.] What is also singular, he has in this passage made shade an essence equally with light, not merely a privation of it; a compliment never, I believe, paid to shadow before, but which might be expected from his aversion to glare, so frequently and so strongly expressed: Hide me from day's garish eye.When the sun begins to fling His flaring beams. The peculiarity of the effect of twilight is to soften and mellow. At that delightful time, even artificial water, however naked, edgy, and tame its banks, will often receive a momentary charm; for then all that is scattered and cutting, all that disgusts a painter's eye, is blended together in one broad and soothing harmony of light and shadow. I have more than once, at such a moment, happened to arrive at a place entirely new to me, and have been struck in the highest degree with the appearance of wood, water, and buildings, that seemed to accompany and set off each other in the happiest and I felt quite impatient to examine all these manner ; beauties by daylight. At length the morn, and cold indifference came. The charm which held them together, and made them act so powerfully as a whole, had vanished. It may, perhaps, be said that the imagination, from a few imperfect hints, often forms beauties which have no existence, and that indifference may naturally arise from those phantoms not being realised. I am far from denying the power of partial concealment and obscurity on the imagination; but in these cases, the set of objects when seen by twilight is beautiful as a picture, and would appear highly so if exactly represented on the canvas; but in full daylight, the sun, as it were, decompounds what had been so happily mixed together, and separates a striking whole into detached unimpressive parts. erected upon the very spot where the first honours emotion ! The Effect of Sounds as modified by Association. Yet The howl of the wolf is little distinguished from the howl of the dog, either in its tone or in its strength; but there is no comparison between their sublimity. There are few, if any, of these sounds so loud as the most common of all sounds, the lowing of a cow. this is the very reverse of sublimity. Imagine this sound, on the contrary, expressive of fierceness or strength, and there can be no doubt that it would become sublime. The hooting of the owl at midnight, or amid ruins, is The scream of the eagle day, is very far from being so. strikingly sublime; the same sound at noon, or during the is simply disagreeable when the bird is either tame or confined; it is sublime only when it is heard amid rocks and independence, and savage majesty. The neighing and deserts, and when it is expressive to us of liberty of a war-horse in the field of battle, or of a young untamed horse when at large among mountains, is powerhorse in the stable is simply indifferent, if not disfully sublime. The same sound in a cart-horse or a agreeable. No sound is more absolutely mean than the an animal remarkable both for fierceness and strengthThe low and feeble sounds of animals grunting of swine. The same sound in the wild boar— is sublime. which are generally considered the reverse of sublime, are rendered so by association. The hissing of a goose and the rattle of a child's plaything are both contemptible sounds; but when the hissing comes from the The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1839) pub-mouth of a dangerous serpent," and the noise of the rattle lished in 1790 Essays on the Nature and Principles is that of the rattlesnake, although they do not differ of Taste, designed to prove that material objects from the others in intensity, they are both of them There is certainly no resemblance, highly sublime. . . . appear beautiful or sublime in consequence of their as sounds, between the noise of thunder and the hissing association with our moral feelings and affections. The objects presented to the eye generate trains of a serpent-between the growling of a tiger and the of thought and pleasing emotion, and these con- explosion of gunpowder-between the scream of the In the same manner, there is as little resemstitute our sense of beauty. This theory, refer- eagle and the shouting of a multitude: yet all of these are ring all our ideas of beauty to the law of associa- sublime. tion, has been disputed and condemned as unten- blance between the tinkling of the sheep-fold bell and able, but part of Mr Alison's reasoning is just, and the murmuring of the breeze-between the hum of the his illustrations and language are particularly beetle and the song of the lark-between the twitter of For example, he thus the swallow and the sound of the curfew; yet all these apposite and beautiful. traces the pleasures of the antiquary : REV. A. ALISON-F. GROSE-R. GOUGH. Memorials of the Past. And Even the peasant, whose knowledge of former times are beautiful. Mr Alison published also two volumes of Sermons, remarkable for elegance of composition. He was a prebendary of Salisbury, and senior minister of St Paul's Chapel, Edinburgh—a man of amiable character and varied accomplishments. FRANCIS GROSE (1731-1791) was a superficial antiquary, but voluminous writer. He published the Antiquities of England and Wales, in eight volumes, the first of which appeared in 1773; and the Antiquities of Scotland, in two volumes, published in 1790. To this work Burns contributed pretty poem!' He wrote also treatises on Ancient his Tam o'Shanter, which Grose characterised as a Armour and Weapons, Military Antiquities, &c. RICHARD GOUGH (1735-1809) was a celebrated 6 topographer and antiquary. His British Topog-fore, is correctly what I just now stated it to be-Could raphy, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, Mr Hastings have been condemned to infamy for writing his enlarged edition of Camden's Britannia, and this book? various other works, evince great research and untiring industry. His valuable collection of books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. LORD ERSKINE. The published Speeches of THOMAS, LORD ERSKINE (1750-1823), are among the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory. Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He served both in the navy and army, but threw up his commission in order to study law, and was called to the bar in his twenty-eighth year. His first speech, delivered in November 1778, in defence of Captain Baillie, lieutenantgovernor of Greenwich Hospital (who was charged with libel), was so brilliant and successful as at once to place him above all his brethren of the bar. In 1783 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth. The floor of the House of Commons, it has been said, is strewed with the wreck of lawyers' reputations, and Erskine's appearances there were, comparatively, failures. In 1806 he was made Lord Chancellor and created Baron Erskine. He enjoyed the Great Seal but for a short time, having retired in 1807 on the dissolution of the Whig ministry. After this he withdrew in great measure from public life, though mingling in society, where his liveliness and wit, his vanity and eccentricities, rendered him a favourite. In 1817 he published a political fragment, entitled Armata, in which are some good observations on constitutional law and history. We subjoin extracts from Erskine's speech in defence of John Stockdale, December 9, 1789. Stockdale had published a defence of Warren Hastings, written by the Rev. John Logan, which, it was said, contained libellous observations upon the House of Commons. On the Law of Libel. Gentlemen, the question you have therefore to try upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this: At a time when the charges against Mr Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table-when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was incessantly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public-when every man was with perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nationswould it have been criminal in Mr Hastings himself to remind the public that he was a native of this free land, entitled to the common protection of her justice, and that he had a defence in his turn to offer to them, the outlines of which he implored them in the meantime to receive, as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished poison in circulation against him? This is, without colour or exaggeration, the true question you are to decide. Because I assert, without the hazard of contradiction, that if Mr Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this volume in his own defence, the author, if he wrote it bona fide to defend him, must stand equally excused and justified; and if the author be justified, the publisher cannot be criminal, unless you had evidence that it was published by him with a different spirit and intention from those in which it was written. The question, there- | Gentlemen, I tremble with indignation to be driven to put such a question in England. Shall it be endured, that a subject of this country may be impeached by the Commons for the transactions of twenty years-that the accusation shall spread as wide as the region of lettersthat the accused shall stand, day after day and year after year, as a spectacle before the public, which shall be kept in a perpetual state of inflammation against him ; yet that he shall not, without the severest penalties, be permitted to submit anything to the judgment of mankind in his defence? If this be law (which it is for you to-day to decide), such a man has no trial. That great a court, but an altar; and an Englishman, instead of hall, built by our fathers for English justice, is no longer being judged in it by God and his country, is a victim and a sacrifice. On the Government of India. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilisation, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed by a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would long since have been not united their efforts to support an authority, which lost to Great Britain, if skill and military prowess had Heaven never gave, by means which it never sanction. can Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be suppressed. I have heard them in my youth, from a naked savage in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. Who is it?' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-' who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains and empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection. It is the nature of everything that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular, and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dullness. Mighty rivers break down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fertilise in the summer: the few may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish from hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce; but they scourge before them the lazy elements, which without them would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself, Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look, hereafter, to have justice administered to ourselves. Upon the principle on which the Attorney-general prays sentence upon my client-God have mercy upon us! Instead of standing before him in judgment with the hopes and consolations of Christians, we must call upon the mountains to cover us; for which of us can present, for omniscient examination, a pure, unspotted, and faultless course? But I humbly expect that the benevolent Author of our being will judge us as I have been pointing out for your example. Holding up the great volume of our lives in his hands, and regarding the general scope of them, if he discovers benevolence, charity, and good-will to man beating in the heart, where he alone can look-if he finds that our conduct, though often forced out of the path by our infirmities, has been in general well directed—his allsearching eye will assuredly never pursue us into those little corners of our lives, much less will his justice select them for punishment, without the general context of our existence, by which faults may be sometimes found to have grown out of virtues, and very many of our heaviest offences to have been grafted by human imperfection upon the best and kindest of our affections. No, gentlemen; believe me, this is not the course of divine justice, or there is no truth in the Gospels of Heaven. If the general tenor of a man's conduct be such as I have represented it, he may walk through the shadow of death, with all his faults about him, with as much cheerfulness as in the common paths of life; because he knows that, instead of a stern accuser to expose before the Author of his nature those frail passages which, like the scored matter in the book before you, chequers the volume of the brightest and best-spent life, his mercy will obscure them from the eye of his purity, and our repentance blot them out for ever. LORD THURLOW. venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my as a man-I am at this moment as respectable—I JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. The one speech of Thurlow's was not more popular or effective than one sentence by the Irish orator, JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN (1750-1817), in his speech in defence of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, prosecuted by the government for a sedi tious libel. The libel contained this declara tion: In four words lies all our power-universal emancipation and representative legislature.' 'I speak,' said Curran, in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the inoment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.' One short speech by the rough, vigorous lawyer and Lord Chancellor, EDWARD THURLOW (1732-matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may 1806), has been pronounced 'superlatively great' in effect. The Duke of Grafton, in the course of a debate in the House of Lords, took occasion to reproach Thurlow with his plebeian extraction and his recent admission to the peerage. The Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, as related by an eye-witness, advanced slowly to the place from which the Chancellor generally addresses the House; then fixing on the duke the look of Jove when he grasped the thunder, 'I am amazed,' he said, in a loud tone of voice, at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my Lords,' considerably raising his voice, 'I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one A passage in Cowper's Task (Book II.) had probably suggested this oratorical burst : We have no slaves at home-then why abroad? ROBERT SOUTHEY. The miscellaneous writings of SOUTHEY are numerous-Letters from England by Don Manuel Espriella, 1807; Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 1829; The Doctor, 1834-47; a vast number of articles in the Quarterly Review, and the different historical and biographical works already noticed. The Doctor is his best prose work; it contains, as he said, something of Tristram Shandy, something of Rabelais, more of Montaigne, and a little of old Burton, yet the predominant characteristic of the book is still his The style of Southey is always easy, pure, and graceful. The following extract is from the Chronicle of the Cid: own. Effects of the Mohammedan Religion. Mohammed inculcated the doctrine of fatalism because it is the most useful creed for a conqueror. The blind passiveness which it causes has completed the degradation, and for ever impeded the improvement of all Mohammedan nations. They will not struggle against oppression, for the same reason that they will not avoid the infection of the plague. If from this state of stupid patience they are provoked into a paroxysm of brutal fury, they destroy the tyrant; but the tyranny remains unaltered. Oriental revolutions are like the casting a stone into a stagnant pool; the surface is broken for a moment, and then the green weeds close over it again. Such a system can produce only tyrants and slaves, those who are watchful to commit any crime for power, and those who are ready to endure any oppression for tranquillity. A barbarous and desolating ambition has been the sole motive of their conquering chiefs; the wisdom of their wisest sovereigns has produced nothing of public benefit: it has ended in idle moralisings, and the late discovery that all is vanity. One tyrant at the hour of death asserts the equality of mankind; another, who had attained empire by his crimes, exposes his shroud at last, and proclaims that now nothing but that is left him. I have slain the princes of men,' said Azzud ad Dowlah, ' and have laid waste the palaces of kings. I have dispersed them to the east, and scattered them to the west, and now the grave calls me, and I must go!' and he died with the frequent exclamation: 'What avails my wealth? my empire is departing from me!' When Mahmoud, the great Gaznevide, was dying of consumption in his Palace of Happiness, he ordered that all his treasures should be brought out to amuse him. They were laid before him, silk and tapestry, jewels, vessels of silver and gold, coffers of money, the spoils of the nations whom he had plundered: it was the spectacle of a whole day; but pride yielded to the stronger feeling of nature; Mahmoud recollected that he was in his mortal sickness, and wept and moralised upon the vanity of the world. It were wearying to dwell upon the habitual crimes of which their history is composed; we may estimate their guilt by what is said of their virtues. Of all the Abbasides, none but Mutaded equalled Almanzor in goodness. A slave one day, when fanning away the flies from him, struck off his turban, upon which Mutaded only remarked, that the boy was sleepy; but the vizier, who was present, fell down and kissed the ground, and exclaimed: 'O Commander of the Faithful, I never heard of such a thing! I did not think such clemency had been possible!" for it was the custom of this caliph, when a slave displeased him, to have the offender buried alive. The Mohammedan sovereigns have suffered their just punishment; they have been miserable as well as wicked. For others they can feel no sympathy, and have learned to take no interest; for themselves there is nothing but fear; their situation excludes them from hope, and they have the perpetual sense of danger, and the dread of that inevitable hour wherein there shall be no distinction of persons. This fear they have felt and Confessed; in youth it has imbittered enjoyment, and words of a song, or the figures of the tapestry, have it has made age dreadful. A dream, or the chance terrified them into tears. Haroun Al Raschid opened a volume of poems, and read: 'Where are the kings, and where are the rest of the world? They are gone the way which thou shalt go. O thou who choosest a perishable world, and callest him happy whom it glorifies, take what the world can give thee, but death is at the end!' And at these words, he who had murdered Yahia and the Barmecides wept aloud. because if they acquire wealth they dare not enjoy it. In these barbarous monarchies the people are indolent, Punishment produces no shame, for it is inflicted by caprice, not by justice. They who are rich or powerful become the victims of rapacity or fear. If a battle or fortress be lost, the commander is punished for his misfortune; if he become popular for his victories, he incurs the jealousy and hatred of the ruler. Nor is it enough that wealth, and honour, and existence are at the despot's mercy; the feelings and instincts must yield at his command. If he take the son for his eunuch, and the daughter for his concubine-if he order the father to execute the child-it is what destiny has appointed, and the Mohammedan says: 'God's will be done.' But insulted humanity has not unfrequently been provoked to take vengeance; the monarch is always in danger, because the subject is never secure. These are the consequences of that absolute power and passive obedience which have resulted from the doctrines of Mohammed; and this is the state of society wherever his religion has been established. Collections of English Poets. The collections of our poets are either too scanty or too copious. They reject so many, that we know not why half whom they retain should be admitted; they admit so many, that we know not why any should be rejected. There is a want of judgment in giving Bavius a place; but when a place has been awarded him, there is a want of justice in not giving Mævius one also. The sentence of Horace concerning middling poets is disproved by daily experience; whatever the gods may do, certainly the public and the booksellers tolerate them. When Dr Aikin began to re-edit Johnson's collection, it was well observed in the Monthly Magazine, 'that to our best writers there should be more commentary; and of our inferior ones less text.' But Johnson begins just where this observation is applicable, and just where a general collection should end. Down to the Restoration it is to be wished that every poet, however unworthy of the name, should be preserved. In the worst volume of elder date, the historian may find something to assist or direct his inquiries; the antiquarian something to elucidate what requires illustration; the philologist something to insert in the margin of his dictionary. Time does more for books than for wine; it gives worth to what originally was worthless. must stand or fall by their own merits, because the sources of information, since the introduction of newspapers, periodical essays, and magazines, are so numerous, that if they are not read for amusement, they will not be recurred to for anything else. The Restoration is the great epoch in our annals, both civil and literary: a new order of things was then established, and we look back to the times beyond, as the Romans under the Empire to the age of the Republic. Those of later date WILLIAM HAZLITT. One of the most remarkable of the miscellaneous writers of this period was WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830), whose bold and vigorous tone of The Character of Falstaff. thinking, and acute criticism on poetry, the drama, and fine arts, found many admirers, especially among young minds. He was a man Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; of decided talent, but prone to paradox, and an exuberation of good-humour and good-nature; an swayed by prejudice. He was well read in the overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship ; old English authors, and had in general a just a giving vent to his heart's ease and over-contentment and delicate perception of their beauties. His with himself and others. He would not be in character style was strongly tinged by the peculiarities of if he were not so fat as he is; for there is the greatest his taste and reading; it was often sparkling, keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination and pungent, and picturesque in expression. Hazlitt the pampered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. was a native of Shropshire, the son of a Unitarian He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he minister. He began life as a painter, but failed does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his in attaining excellence in the profession, though jokes as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, he retained through life the most vivid and where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon intense appreciation of its charms. His principal them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and support was derived from the literary and political in the chambers of his brain it snows of meat and drink.' He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, journals, to which he contributed essays, reviews, and we live with him in a round of invitations to a and criticisms. He wrote a metaphysical treatise rump and dozen. Yet we are not to suppose that he On the Principles of Human Action, 1805; an was a mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagination abridgment of Tucker's Light of Nature, 1807; as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupefy Eloquence of the British Senate, 1808. In 1813 his other faculties, but 'ascends me into the brain, clears Hazlitt delivered a series of Lectures on English away all the dull crude vapours that environ it, and Philosophy at the Russell Institution. In 1817 makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.' appeared his View of the English Stage, and a His imagination keeps up the ball after his senses have collection of essays entitled The Round Table. done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoyIn 1818 he lectured at the Surrey Institution on ment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his the English Poets. The English Comic Writers, which he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description The Dramatic Literature of the Time of Elizabeth, enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinkand the Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, were ing; but we never see him at table. He carries his own then successively produced, being chiefly com- larder about with him, and he is himself a tun of posed of theatrical criticisms contributed to the man.' His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle journals of the day. He wrote also Table Talk, is a joke to shew his contempt for glory accompanied 1821-22; The Spirit of the Age (criticisms on con- with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean temporaries), 1825; The Plain Speaker, a collection philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, of essays, 1826. Various sketches of the galleries such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, of art in England appeared from his pen, and that it does not seem quite certain whether the account Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an originally contributed to one of the daily papers. out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack, with only He wrote the article 'Fine Arts' for the Encyclo- self as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite proone halfpenny-worth of bread, was not put there by himpædia Britannica, and essays on the English pensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He Novelists and other standard authors, first pub- is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, lished in the Edinburgh Review. In the London &c., and yet we are not offended, but delighted with Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and other him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to periodicals, the hand of Hazlitt may be traced. gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters His most elaborate work was a Life of Napoleon, to shew the humorous part of them. The unrestrained in four volumes (1828-30), which evinces all the indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, peculiarities of his mind and opinions, but is very has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is ably written. Shortly before his death-which an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, took place in London on the 18th of September and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a 1830-he had committed to the press the Conversa-moral point of view, than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian who should represent him to the tions of James Northcote, Esq., containing remarks on arts and artists. The toils, uncertainties, and life, before one of the police-offices. disappointments of a literary life, and the contests of bitter political warfare, soured and warped the mind of Hazlitt, and distorted his opinions of men and things; but those who trace the passionate flights of his imagination, his aspirations after ideal excellence and beauty, the brilliancy of his language while dwelling on some old poem, or picture, or dream of early days, and the undisguised freedom with which he pours out his whole soul to the reader, will readily assign to him both strength and versatility of genius. He had felt more than he had reflected or studied; and though proud of his acquirements as metaphysician, he certainly could paint emotions better than he could unfold principles. The only son of Mr Hazlitt has, with pious diligence and care, collected and edited his father's works in a series of handsome portable volumes. a The Character of Iamlet. It is the one of Shakspeare'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 to 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 commonplace pedant. If Lear is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has unstudied development of character. Shakspeare had shewn more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort; the incidents succeed each other |