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With every sensuality our giddiness
Doth frame an idol, are unconstant friends,
When any troubled passion makes us halt
On the unguarded castle of the mind.
Cal. To what end

Reach all these moral texts?

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 To place before ye 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

A perfect mirror, wherein you may see
How weary I am of a lingering life;
Who count the best a misery.

Cal.

Indeed

You have no little cause; yet none so great
As to distrust a remedy.

Pen.

That remedy

Must be a winding sheet! a fold of lead,
And some untrod-on corner of the earth.-
Not to detain your expectation, princess,
I have an humble suit.
Cal.

Speak; and enjoy it.
Pen. Vouchsafe, then, to be my executrix,
And take that trouble on you to dispose
Such legacies as I bequeath, impartially;

I have not much to give; the pains are easy,
Heav'n will reward your piety, and thank
When I am dead; for sure I must not live:
I hope I cannot.'

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The least grief from
It grows from me.
Frank.
Sus.

You are not; if you keep re: but I know the cause;

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In me or my behaviour: you're not kind
In the concealment. 'Las, sir, I am young,
Silly and plain; more strange to those contents
A wife should offer. Say but in what I fail,
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.
To make it ebb or flow into my face,
You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea,
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.
Feathering love-shafts, whose golden heads he dips
Within thy clear eye amorous Cupid sits

Sus. Come, come: these golden strings of flattery
Shall not tie up my speech, sir; I must know
The ground of your disturbance.

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 per-In thy chaste breast. former! 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 al1eady exhibited. As a specimen of the range of the author's talents, we shall present our leaders 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

Frank.

Then look here;

For here, here is the fen in which this hydra
of discontent grows rank.

Sus.
Heaven shield it! Where?
Frank. In mine own bosom! here the cause has
root;
The poisoned leeches twist about my heart,
And will, I hope, confound me.

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

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Sus. And will not that, sweet-heart, ask a long
Methinks it is the hardest piece of work
That e'er I took in hand.

Frank.

Fie, fie! why look,
I'll make it plain and easy to you. Farewell.
[Kisses her.
Sus. Ah, 'las! I'm not half perfect in it yet.
I must have it thus read an hundred times.
Pray you take some pains, I confess my dulness.
Frank. Come! again and again, farewell. [Kisses
her.] Yet wilt return?

All questions of my journey, my stay, employment,
And revisitation, fully I have answered all.
There's nothing now behind but-
Sus.

But this request

Frank. What is't?
[more,
Sus. That I may bring you thro' one pasture
Up to yon knot of trees: amongst those shadows
I'll vanish from you; they shall teach me how.
Frank. Why 'tis granted: come, walk then.
Sus.
Nay, not too fast:
They say, slow things have best perfection;
The gentle show'r wets to fertility,

Thou art my husband, Death! I embrace thee
With all the love I have. Forget the stain
A crystal virgin to thee. My soul's purity
Of my unwitting sin: and then I come
Shall, with bold wings, ascend the doors of mercy;
For innocence is ever her companion.

Frank. Not yet mortal? I would not linger you,
Or leave you a tongue to blab. [Stabs her again.
Sus. Now heaven reward you ne'er the worse for
I did not think that death had been so sweet, [me!
Had I stay'd forty years for preparation:
Nor I so apt to love him. I could ne'er die better,
For I'm in charity with all the world.
Let me for once be thine example, heaven;
Do to this man as I, forgive him freely,
And may he better die, and sweeter live. [Dies."
Vol. ii. pp. 452-445.

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 scoff, and those who are inclined to admire. enough, both by those who are disposed to 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 exist

The churlish storm makes mischief with his bounty.ence of such faults: But there are many who

Frank. Now, your request Is out yet will you leave me? Sus.

You'll make me stay for ever,

Rather than part with such a sound from you.
Frank. Why, you almost anger me.-'Pray you
You have no company, and 'tis very early; [begone.
Some hurt may betide you homewards.

Sus.

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

Tush! I fear none

To leave you is the greatest I can suffer.
Frank. So! I shall have more trouble."

Here the dog rubs against him; and, after than any other species of poetry. We shall some more talk, he stabs her!

"Sur.
Why then I thank you;
You have done lovingly, leaving yourself,
That you would thus bestow me on another.

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, | truth, rather an encomium on Shakespeare, or historical elucidation ;—neither is it a me- than a commentary or critique on him-and taphysical dissertation, full of wise perplexi- is written, more to show extraordinary love, ties 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.

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 super stition, to blame him very much for his error: and though we think, of course, that our own admiration is, on the whole, more discriminat ing and judicious, there are not many points on which, especially after reading his eloquent

exposition of them, we should be much inclined to disagree with him.

In the exposition of these, there is room enough for originality,-and more room than Mr. H. has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently;-partly in the development of the principal

The book, as we have already intimated, is written less to tell the reader what Mr. H. knows about Shakespeare or his writings, than to explain to them what he feels about them-characters with which Shakespeare has peoand why he feels so--and thinks that all who profess to love poetry should feel so likewise. What we chiefly look for in such a work, accordingly, is a fine sense of the beauties of the author, and an eloquent exposition of them; and all this, and more, we think, may be found in the volume before us. There is nothing niggardly in Mr. H.'s praises, and nothing affected in his raptures. He seems animated throughout with a full and hearty sympathy with the delight which his author should inspire, and pours himself gladly out in explanation of it, with a fluency and ardour, obviously much more akin to enthusiasm than affectation. He seems pretty generally, indeed, in a state of happy intoxication-and has borrowed from his great original, not indeed the force or brilliancy of his fancy, but something of its playfulness, and a large share of his apparent joyousness and self-indulgence in its exercise. It is evidently a great pleasure to him to be fully possessed with the beauties of his author, and to follow the impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to impress them upon his readers.

pled 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 is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of nature-that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, 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 world's affairs, without deserting for an instant When we have said that his observations the proper business of the scene, or appearing are generally right, we have said, in sub- to pause or digress, from the love of ornament stance, that they are not generally original; or need of repose!-HE ALONE, who, when for the beauties of Shakespeare are not of so the object requires it, is always keen and dim or equivocal a nature as to be visible only worldly and practical-and who yet, without to learned eyes and undoubtedly his finest changing his hand, or stopping his course, passages are those which please all classes of scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds readers, and are admired for the same quali- and shapes of sweetness-and conjures up ties by judges from every school of criticism. landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshEven with regard to those passages, however, ness, and peoples them with Spirits of gloa skilful commentator will find something rious aspect and attractive grace-and is a worth hearing to tell. Many persons are very thousand times more full of fancy and imasensible of the effect of fine poetry on their gery, and splendour, than those who, in purfeelings, who do not well know how to refer suit of such enchantments, have shrunk back these feelings to their causes; and it is always from the delineation of character or passion, a delightful thing to be made to see clearly and declined the discussion of human duties the sources from which our delight has pro- | and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule ceeded-and to trace back the mingled stream and sagacity, than all the moralists and sathat has flowed upon our hearts, to the remo- tirists that ever existed-he is more wild, ter fountains from which it has been gathered. airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and And when this is done with warmth as well fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and as precision, and embodied in an eloquent de-ages of the world:-and has all those elescription of the beauty which is explained, it ments so happily mixed up in him, and bears forms one of the most attractive, and not the his high faculties so temperately, that the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all most severe reader cannot complain of him works of merit, however, and especially in all for want of strength or of reason-nor the most works of original genius, there are a thousand sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. retiring and less obtrusive graces, which es- Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundcape hasty and superficial observers, and only ance, and unequalled perfection-but every give out their beauties to fond and patient thing so balanced and kept in subordination, contemplation;-a thousand slight and har- as not to jostle or disturb or take the place monising touches, the merit and the effect of of another. The most exquisite poetical conwhich are equally imperceptible to vulgar ceptions, images, and descriptions, are given eyes; and a thousand indications of the contin- with such brevity, and introduced with such ual presence of that poetical spirit, which can skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the only be recognised by those who are in some sense they accompany. Although his sails measure under its influence, or have prepared are purple and perfumed, and his prow of themselves to receive it, by worshipping beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. 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.

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 common observation ?

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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 That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!"

Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked after a long sleep,
Would make me sleep again."

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 generally-to the forest scenes in As You Like It-the rustic parts of the Winter's Taleseveral 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 horrors that are to be enacted within. There is This is still finer, we think, than the noble no hint of any such suggestion-but it is set speech on Music in the Merchant of Venice, down from the pure love of nature and reand only to be compared with the enchant-ality-because the kindled mind of the poet ments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their tion on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Arial to the brutish Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies; and thus exhorts his less poetical associates

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"Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and
hurt not.

*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 dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of the expression would be lost: as our fancies would no longer be recalled to the privacy of that dimlighted chamber which the lovers were so reluctantly leaving.

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 Macbeth 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 Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste brook, To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit ?”

No one but Shakespeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope—any more than the following into the mouth of a mercenary murderer.

Their lips are four red roses on a stalk,
And in their summer beauty kissed each other!"
Dr this delicious description of concealed love,
into that of a regretful and moralizing parent.
But he, his own affections Counsellor,
Is to himself so secret and so close,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun."

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
Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o' th' taper
Bows towards her! and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied
Under the windows, white and azure, laced
With blue of Heaven's own tinct!-on her left
breast

A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip!"

But we must break at once away from these manifold enchantments--and recollect that our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with the great and gifted author on whom he is employed: And, to avoid the danger of any further preface, we shall now let him speak a little for himself. In his remarks on Cymbeline, which is the first play in his arrangement, he takes occasion to make the following observations on the female characters of his author.

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 By comparing it with other characters of the same be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. author we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III. as it is possible hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, to imagine, though these two characters in common would have been a repetition of the same general idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers,-both aspiring and ambitious,-both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. "It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare's Richard is from his birth deformed in body and heroines, that they seem to exist only in their at- mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth tachment to others. They are pure abstractions of is full of "the milk of human kindness," is frank, the affections. We think as little of their persons sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commisas they do themselves; because we are let into the sion of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigasecrets of their hearts, which are more important. tions of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. 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 pros. ral 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 posterity— false 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 wanters, and of his good name, among the causes which of prominence and theatrical display in Shakespeare's female characters, from the circumstance, that women in those days were not allowed to play the parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage heroines."pp. 3, 4.

have made him weary of life; and regrets that he has ever seized the Crown by unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity. There are other decisive differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting hardened knave, wholly regard. less of everything but his own ends, and the means to secure them.-Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character. From the

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