Pen. That remedy Must be a winding sheet! a fold of lead, Speak; and enjoy it. After leaving her fame, her youth, &c. in some very pretty but fantastical verses, she proceeds "Pen. 'Tis long agone, since first I lost my heart; Long have I lived without it; else for certain I should have given that too; But instead Of it, to great Calantha, Sparta's heir, By service bound, and by affection vow'd, I do bequeath in holiest rites of love Mine only brother, Ithocles. Cal. What say'st thou ? Pen. him. After taking this unjustifiable step, he is naturally troubled with certain inward compunctions, which manifest themselves in his exterior, and excite the apprehensions of his innocent bride. It is her dialogue with him that we are now to extract; and we think the picture that it affords of unassuming innocence and singleness of heart, is drawn with great truth, and even elegance. She begins with asking him why he changes countenance so suddenly. He answers "Who, I? For nothing. Sus. Dear, say not so: a spirit of your constancy Cannot endure this change for nothing. I've observ'd In me or my behaviour: you're not kind 'Las, sir, I am young, strange to those contents Say but in what I fail, I must leave the world In the concealment. To revel in Elysium; and 'tis just To wish my brother some advantage here; Yet by my best hopes, Ithocles is ignorant Of this pursuit. Cal. You have forgot, Penthea, How still I have a father. I am a sister, though to me this brother There are passages of equal power and beauty in the plays called "Love's Sacrifice," "The Lover's Melancholy," and in "Fancies Chaste and Noble." In Perkin Warbeck, there is a more uniform and sustained elevation of style. But we pass all those over, to give our readers a word or two from "The Witch of Edmonton," a drama founded upon the recent execution of a miserable old woman for that fashionable offence; and in which the devil, in the shape of a black dog, is a principal performer! The greater part of the play, in which Ford was assisted by Dekkar and Rowley, is of course utterly absurd and contemptiblethough not without its value as a memorial of the strange superstition of the age; but it contains some scenes of great interest and beauty, though written in a lower and more familiar tone than most of those we have already exhibited. As a specimen of the range of the author's talents, we shall present our readers with one of these. Frank Thorney had privately married a woman of inferior rank; and is afterwards strongly urged by his father, and his own inclination, to take a second wife, in the person of a rich yeoman's daughter whose affections were fixed upon Silly and plain; more A wife should offer. I'll study satisfaction. Frank. Come; in nothing. Sus. I know I do: knew I as well in what, You should not long be sullen. Pr'ythee, love, If I have been immodest or too bold," Speak't in a frown; if peevishly too nice, Shew't in a smile. Thy liking is a glass By which I'll habit my behaviour. Frank. Dost weep now? Sus. Wherefore You, sweet, have the power To make me passionate as an April day.. Now smile, then weep; now pale, then crimson red. You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea, To make it ebb or flow into my face, As your looks change. Frank. Change thy conceit, I pr'ythee: Thou'rt all perfection: Diana herself Swells in thy thoughts and moderates thy beauty. Within thy clear eye amorous Cupid sits In thy chaste breast. Feathering love-shafts, whose golden heads he dips Sus. Come, come: these golden strings of flattery Shall not tie up my speech, sir; I must know The ground of your disturbance. Frank. Then look here; For here, here is the fen in which this hydra The poisoned leeches twist about my heart, Sus. You speak riddles." Vol. ii. pp. 437-440. The unfortunate bigamist afterwards resolves to desert this innocent creature; but, in the act of their parting, is moved by the devil, who rubs against him in the shape of a dog! to murder her. We are tempted to give the greater part of this scene, just to show how much beauty of diction and natural expression of character may be combined with the most revolting and degrading absurdities. The unhappy bridegroom says— "Why would you delay? we have no other business Now, but to part. [time? Frank. All questions of my journey, my stay, employment, But this request Frank. What is't? Thou art my husband, Death! I embrace thee Frank. Not yet mortal? I would not linger you, We cannot afford any more space for Mr. Ford; and what we have said, and what we have shown of him, will probably be thought enough, both by those who are disposed to scoff, and those who are inclined to admire. It is but fair, however, to intimate, that a thorough perusal of his works will afford more exercise to the former disposition than to the latter. His faults are glaring and abundant; but we have not thought it necessary to produce any specimens of them, because they are exactly the sort of faults which every one acquainted with the drama of that age reckons upon finding. No body doubts of the existence of such faults: But there are many doubt of the existence of any counterbalancWhat? so churlishly ing beauties; and therefore it seemed worth while to say a word or two in their explanation. There is a great treasure of poetry, we think, still to be brought to light in the neglected writers of the age to which this author belongs; and poetry of a kind which, if purified and improved, as the happier specimens show that it is capable of being, would be far more delightful to the generality of English readers Here the dog rubs against him; and, after than any other species of poetry. We shall some more talk, he stabs her! You'll make me stay for ever, Rather than part with such a sound from you. Tush! I fear none: who readily be excused for our tediousness by those who are of this opinion; and should not have been forgiven, even if we had not been tedious, by those who look upon it as a heresy. (August, 1817.) Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. By WILLIAM HAZLITT. 8vo. pp. 352. London: 1817.* THIS is not a book of black-letter learning, or historical elucidation;-neither is it a metaphysical dissertation, full of wise perplexities and elaborate reconcilements. It is, in It may be thought that enough had been said of our early dramatists, in the immediately preceding article; and it probably is so. But I could not resist the temptation of thus renewing, in my own name, that vow of allegiance, which I had so often taken anonymously, to the only true and lawful King of our English Poetry and now venture, therefore, fondly to replace this slight and perishable wreath on his august and undecaying shrine with no farther apology than that it presumes to direct attention but to one, and that, as I think, a comparatively neglected, aspect of his universal genius. truth, rather an encomium on Shakespeare, than a commentary or critique on him—and is written, more to show extraordinary love, than extraordinary knowledge of his productions. Nevertheless, it is a very pleasing book--and, we do not hesitate to say, a book of very considerable originality and genius. The author is not merely an admirer of our great dramatist, but an Idolater of him; and openly professes his idolatry. We have ourselves too great a leaning to the same superstition, to blame him very much for his error: and though we think, of course, that our own admiration is, on the whole, more discriminating and judicious, there are not many points on which, especially after reading his eloquent POETRY. exposition of them, we should be much in- The book, as we have already intimated, is In the exposition of these, there is room Mr. H. has yet filled. In many points, howenough for originality, and more room than ever, he has acquitted himself excellently;partly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakespeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers-but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out that fond familiarity with beautiful forms and images-that eternal recurrence to what nature that indestructible love of flowers is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the Material elements of Poetryand that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying Soul-and which, in the midst of Shakespeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins-contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the exist ence of purer and brighter elements!—which HE ALONE has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint; and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this When we have said that his observations the proper business of the scene, or appearing world's affairs, without deserting for an instant are generally right, we have said, in sub-to pause or digress, from the love of ornament stance, that they are not generally original; for the beauties of Shakespeare are not of so dim or equivocal a nature as to be visible only to learned eyes-and undoubtedly his finest passages are those which please all classes of readers, and are admired for the same qualities by judges from every school of criticism. Even with regard to those passages, however, a skilful commentator will find something worth hearing to tell. Many persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry on their feelings, who do not well know how to refer these feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded and to trace back the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts, to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered. And when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation;-a thousand slight and harmonising touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit, which can only be recognised by those who are in some measure under its influence, or have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping y at the shrines which it inhabits. or need of repose!-HE ALONE, who, when the object requires it, is always keen and worldly and practical-and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with Spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace-and is a thousand times more full of fancy and imagery, and splendour, than those who, in pursuit of such enchantments, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed-he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world:-and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason-nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection-but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the are purple and perfumed, and his prow of sense they accompany. Although his sails beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator. Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon, are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character, and describe his situation more briefly and effectually, than any other words could have done. In this play, indeed, and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely, to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays gen What other poet has put all the charm of a Moonlight landscape into a single line?-and that by an image so true to nature, and so simple, as to seem obvious to the most com-erally-to the forest scenes in As You Like mon observation ? "See how the Moonlight SLEEPS on yonder bank!" Who else has expressed, in three lines, all that is picturesque and lovely in a Summer's Dawn?-first setting before our eyes, with magical precision, the visible appearances of the infant light, and then, by one graceful and glorious image, pouring on our souls all the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity of returning morning?— "See, love! what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East ! Night's candles are burnt out,-and jocund Day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops!" Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated, as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music— "O it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South This is still finer, we think, than the noble opera "Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, It-the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale— several entire scenes in Cymbeline, and in Romeo and Juliet, and many passages in all the other plays-as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking-the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image as this, at the portal of that blood-stained castle of Macbeth? "This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved masonry that heaven's breath Smells wooingly here. No jutting frieze, Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle." Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horIrors that are to be enacted within: There is no hint of any such suggestion-but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality-because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that emphatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Mac beth says, "Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it." And in that proud boast of the bloody Richard "But I was born so high: Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun!" The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon. "Will these moist trees That have out-liv'd 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 thine o'er-night's surfeit ?" *If the advocates for the grand style object to this expression, we shall not stop to defend it: But to us, it seems equally beautiful, as it is obvious and natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber into the pale dawn. The word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy of verses; and she could not be called the candle of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed into lamps. If we should read, "The lamps of heaven are quenched," or "wax No one but Shakespeare would have thought dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of of putting this noble picture into the taunting the expression would be lost: as our fancies would no longer be recalled to the privacy of that dim-address of a snappish misanthrope-any more lighted chamber which the lovers were so reluct- than the following into the mouth of a merantly leaving. cenary murderer. And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are, than we feel at once their beauty and their effect; and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and atractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen, into the mouth of one who is not even a lover. "It is her breathing that breast on her left A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops His remarks on Macbeth are of a higher and bolder character. After noticing the wavering and perplexity of Macbeth's resolution, "driven on, as it were, by the violence of his Fate, and staggering under the weight of his own purposes," he strikingly observes, "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 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 and Gonnerill. She is only wicked to gain a great not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan end; and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and inexorable selfwill, 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."-pp. 18, 19. But the best part perhaps of this critique, is the comparison of the Macbeth with the Richard of the same author. "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. But we must break at once away from these By comparing it with other characters of the same manifold enchantments--and recollect that author we shall perceive the absolute truth and our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy the great and gifted author on whom he is whirl and rapid career of events. Thus he is as employed: And, to avoid the danger of any distinct a being from Richard III. as it is possible further preface, we shall now let him speak hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, to imagine, though these two characters in common a little for himself. In his remarks on Cym- would have been a repetition of the same general beline, which is the first play in his arrange-idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are ment, he takes occasion to make the following observations on the female characters of his author. 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. "It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare'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 Fate and metaphysical aid' conspire against his to look at their faces, except by stealth and at inter- virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary vals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the needs no prompter; but wades through a series of female character, the sense of weakness leaning crimes to the height of his ambition, from the unon the strength of its affections for support, so well governable violence of his temper and a reckless as Shakespeare-no one ever so well painted natu- love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prosral tenderness free from affectation and disguise-pect or in the success of his villanies: Macbeth is no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to and extravagant: For the romance of his heroines commit; and of remorse after its perpetration. (in which they abound) is only an excess of the Richard has no mixture of common humanity in habitual prejudices of their sex; scrupulous of being his composition, no regard to kindred or posterityfalse to their vows or truant to their affections, and he owns no fellowship with others; he is himself taught by the force of feeling when to forego the alone.' Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is some measure the dupe of his uxoriousness; ranks nothing so logical as passion. Cibber, in speaking the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his followof the early English stage, accounts for the want ers, and of his good name, among the causes which of prominence and theatrical display in Shake- have made him weary of life; and regrets that he speare's female characters, from the circumstance, has ever seized the Crown by unjust means, since that women in those days were not allowed to play he cannot transmit it to his posterity. There are the parts of women, which made it necessary to other decisive differences inherent in the two charkeep them a good deal in the back ground. Does acters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the not this state of manners itself, which prevented world, a plotting hardened knave, wholly regardtheir exhibiting themselves in public, and confined less of everything but his own ends, and the means them to the relations and charities of domestic life, to secure them.-Not so Macbeth. The superstiafford a truer explanation of the matter? His wo- tions of the age, the rude state of society, the men are certainly very unlike stage heroines."- local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and pp. 3, 4. imaginary grandeur to his character. From the |