'der box, to get the taper lighted'-speaks of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, as that in which they are to play a 'prize, a trial of skill in huffing and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors of a twopenny reckoning.' And finally, alluding to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the Emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up his charges: This may show with what 'indignity our poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is no 'other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one must wear a fool's coat, that comes to be dressed by him; nor is he more civil to 'the ladies-Portia, in good manners, might have challenged 'more respect; she that shines, a glory of the first magnitude in 'the gallery of heroic dames, is, with our poet, scarce one remove 'from a natural; she is the own cousin-german of one piece, the 'very same impertinent, silly flesh and blood with Desdemona. 'Shakespear's genius lay for comedy and humour. In tragedy 'he appears quite out of his element; his brains are turned-he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or 'any rule to control him, to set bounds to his phrenzy.'

One truth, though the author did not understand it, is told in this critique on Julius Cæsar; that Shakspeare's 'senators and 'his orators had their learning and education at the same school, 'be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble Romans.' They drew, in their golden urns, from the deep fountain of humanity, those living waters which lose not their sweetness or their inspiration, in the changes of man's external condition.

These attacks on Shakspeare are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame. Their whole tone shows that the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange. He speaks as one with authority to decide. We look now on his work amazedly; and were it put forth by a writer of our times, should regard it as "the very ecstacy of madness." Such is the lot of genius. However small the circle of contemporary admirers, it must "gather fame" as time rolls on. It appeals to natural beauty and feeling, which cannot alter. The minds who once have deeply felt it, can never lose the impression it first made upon them-they transmit it to others of a kindred feeling, by whom it is extended to those who are worthy to treasure it within their souls.

We should not, however, have thus dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we regarded them merely as objects of wonder, or as proofs of the partial influence of Shakspeare's genius. They are far from deserving unmingled scorn. Their author has a heartiness, an earnestness almost romantic, which we cannot despise, though directed against our idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry, he has a chivalric devotion to all that he regards as excelfent, stately, and grand. He looks on the supposed errors of the

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poet as moral crimes. He confounds fiction with fact-grows warm in defence of shadows-feels a violation of poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a jury-moves a Habeas Corpus for all damsels imprisoned in romance and if the bard kills those of his characters who deserve to live, pronounces judgment on him as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the Don Quixote of criticism. Like the illustrious hero of Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhibition in his disinterested rage. He does more honour to the poet, than any other writer, for he seems to regard him as an arbiter of life and death-responsible only to the critic for the administration of his powers.

Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice cannot be punished too severely, and that the poet ought to leave his victims objects of pity, he protests against the introduction of very wicked characters. Therefore,' says he, among the 'ancients we find no malefactors of this kind; a wilful murderer, 'is, with them, as strange and unknown as a parricide to the old 'Romans. Yet need we not fancy that they were squeamish, or 'unacquainted with any of those great lumping crimes in that age: 'when we remember their dipus, Orestes, or Medea. But they 'took care to wash the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with such art to prepare the morsel: they made it all junket to the 'taste, and all physic in the operation. Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet's characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would martial them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given—such a degree of sorrow, and no more, ought a character to endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons very beautifully on his own poetic decalogue. Amintor,' says he, (speaking of a character in the Maid's Tragedy,) 'should have 'begged the king's pardon; should have suffered all the racks and ' tortures a tyrant could inflict; and from Perillus's bull should have still bellowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was to 'be kept that he is true to Aspatia, that he dies for his mistress! Then would his memory have been precious and sweet to after 'ages; and the midsummer maidens would have offered their gar'lands all at his grave.'

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Some there are, who trace the emotions of strange delight which tragedy awakens entirely to the love of strong excitement, which is gratified by spectacles of anguish. According to their doctrine,

the more nearly the representation of sorrow approaches reality, the more intense will be the gratification of the spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, that if the audience at a tragedy were informed of an execution about to take place in the neighbourhood, they would leave the theatre to witness it. We believe that experience does not warrant a speculation so dishonourable to our nature. How few, except those of the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the punishment of capital offenders! Even of those whom the dreadful infliction draws together, how many are excited merely by curiosity, and a desire to view that last mortal agony, which in a form more or less terrible all must endure! We think that if, during the representation of a tragedy, the audience were compelled to feel vividly that a fellow creature was struggling in the agonies of a violent death, many of them would retire-but not to the scene of horror. The reality of human suffering would come too closely home to their hearts, to permit their enjoyment of the fiction. How often, during the scenic exhibition of intolerable agony-unconsecrated and unredeemed-have we been compelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the highest triumph of an author, whose aim is to heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces us, in our own defence, to escape from his power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy were merely occasioned by the love of excitement, the pleasure would be in proportion to the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then would The Gamester be more pathetic [and interesting] than Othello, and Isabella call forth deeper admiration than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the Newgate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently to refute the position on which they are founded.

Equally false is the opinion, that the pleasure derived from tragedy arises from a source of individual security, while others are suffering. There are no feelings more distantly removed from the selfish, than those which genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at its representation out of ourselves and "the ignorant present time," by earnest sympathy with the passions and the sorrows, not of ourselves, but of our nature. We feel our community with the general heart of man. The encrustments of selfishness and low passion are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human sympathies gushes triumphantly from its secret and divine sources.

It is the high duty of the tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest in its distresses-to dignify or to sweeten sorrow-to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with each other, or with the accidents of the world-and to disclose the depth and the immortality of the affections. He must represent humanity as a rock, beaten, and

sometimes overspread, with the mighty waters of anguish, but still unshaken. We look to him for hopes, principles, resting places of the soul-for emotions which dignify our passions, and consecrate our woes. A brief retrospect of tragedy will show, that in every age when it has triumphed, it has appealed not to the mere love of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty in the soul-to the yearnings of the deepest affections-to the aspirations after grandeur and permanence, which never leave man even in his errors and afflictions.-Nothing could be more dignified or stately than the old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were demi-gods, or heroes; its subjects were often the destinies of those lines of the mighty, which had their beginning among the eldest deities. So far, in the development of their plots, were the poets from appealing to mere sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a human tear. In their works, we see the catastrophe from the beginning, and feel its influence at every step, as we advance majestically along the solemn avenue which it closes. There is little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed on high, and they pass, in sublime composure, to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful,-their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of heaven. The glory that plays about their heads, is the prognostic of their fate. A consecration is shed over their brief and sad career, which takes away all the ordinary feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are sacred, their passions inspired by the gods, their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths almost festal. All things are tinged with sanctity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies. Bodily pain is made sublime; destitution and wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the very grove of the Furies is represented as ever fresh and green. How grand is the suffering of Prometheus,-how sweet the resolution of Antigone,→→ how appalling, yet how magnificent, the last vision of Cassandra, -how reconciling and tender, yet how mysteriously awful, the death of Edipus! And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the Athenian poets breathe over all the creations of their genius! Their exquisite groups appear, in all the venerableness of hoar antiquity; yet in the distinctness and in the bloom of unfading youth. All the human figures are seen, sublime in attitude, and exquisite in finishing; while, in the dim back ground, appear the shapes of eldest gods, and the solemn abstractions of life, fearfully embodied-" Death the skeleton, and time the shadow!" Surely there is something more in all this, than a vivid picture of the sad realities of our human existence.

The Romans excelled not in tragedy, because their love of mere excitement was too keen to permit them to enjoy it. They had "supped full of horrors." Familiar with the thoughts of real slaughter, they could not endure the philosophic and poetic view of VOL. I.

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distress in which it is softened and made sacred. Their imaginations were too practical for a genuine poet to affect. Hence, in the plays which bear the name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on horrors the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions (as that of Medea) are rewritten and made ghastly-and every touch that might redeem and soften is carefully effaced by the poet. Still the grandeur of old tragedy is there still "the gorgeous pall comes sweeping by"—still the dignity survives, though the beauty has faded.

In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless, tragedy was devested of something of its external grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world had lost its living charm. Its heroic forms remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or grace, in the distant regions of the imagination; but they could no longer occupy the foreground of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and blood, animated by human passion, and awakening human sympathy. Shakspeare, therefore, sought for his materials nearer to common humanity than the elder bards. He took also, in each play, a far wider range than they had dared to occupy. The reconciling power of his imagination, and the genial influences of his philosophy, are ever softening and consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow hues of fancy over objects in themselves repulsive. He nicely developes the "soul of goodness in things evil" to console and to delight us. He blends all the most glorious imagery of nature with the passionate expressions of affliction. He sometimes in a single image expresses an intense sentiment in all its depth, yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon, in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb on the beached shore, that the wave of the ocean may once a day cover him with its embossed foam-expanding an individual feeling into the extent of the vast and eternal sea; yet making us feel it as more intense, from the very sublimity of the image. The mind can always rest without anguish on his catastrophes, however mournful. Sad as the story of Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or tear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by awakening sweet tears. Their joys, indeed, are nipped in early blossom; but the flower that is softly shed on the earth, yet puts forth undying odours. We shriek not at their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on their loves and virtues, but almost long with them there "to set up our everlasting rest." We do not feel unmingled agony at the death of Lear;-when his aged heart, which has beaten so fearfully, is at rest-and his withered frame, late o'er-informed with terrific energy, reposes with his pious child. We are not shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls; for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this world, and his own gentle contemplations on death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shak