To make this clear, it must first be remarked, that it is all addressed to Edgar, who is naked, by the king, who still retains his robes, as well as the other two to whom he alludes, namely, Kent and the fool. Seeing one less accommodated than himself, he instantly moralizes thus :-"Is then man supplied by nature with nought but this uncovered frame? This should be considered. Thou (to Edgar) art not indebted to the silk-worm, or the beast, or the sheep, for clothing; neither to the civet-cat for unnecessary perfume. We three are better provided, but thou art indebted to no art. If, then, this be so, these garments are but lendings, not our own. Off with them, unbutton here." If understood in this way, we extract a very fine meaning from the passage.

Act II. Sc. 4 :

"EDGAR. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet! he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."

It may be well to remind the reader that all spirits walking the earth by night, are recalled to their several dwelling-places at the first cock-crowing. See Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1:

"I have heard

The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,
Awake the God of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire,-in earth or air,

The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine."

Lear's description of the flattery with which he was assailed in his prosperity, "They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there; to say aye and no to everything that I said aye and no to, was no good divinity," (Act IV. Sc. 6,) reminds me strongly of the description of the flatterer in Juvenal, (III. 100,) which it may be interesting to the reader to compare with it. It runs thus:—

"Rides? majore cachinno

Concutitur; flet, si lacrymas inspexit amici,

Nec dolet; igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas,
Accipit endromidem; si dixeris, Estuo,' sudat."

In the same scene, a very few lines farther on, we have a passage which has been brought forward by those who support the doctrine that the loss of his power was the cause of Lear's madness.

"GLOSTER. The trick of that voice I do well remember; Is't not the king?

LEAR. Ay, every inch a king?" &c.

Lear, it must be confessed, dwells strongly on the point of his being a king. When he first enters in this scene he says, "I am the king himself;" but it appears to me to be the part of a childish old man, and more especially a madman, to lay hold of things like this to boast of. Perhaps the meaning of the word "trick" here may be difficult to define. I think it is used in this way by Shakspere, to express that peculiarity by which one of the kind may be distinguished from another ;-" trick of the voice," is that striking characteristic by which one man's voice may be told from another's. So, in Winter's Tale, Act I. Sc. 3, Paulina, speaking of the child of Hermione, which Leontes disowns, lays great stress upon the "trick of his frown," as a proof that the child is his. This of itself gives us the correct meaning of the word.

I know no passage which gave me such trouble to understand, as the following in the same scene :—

Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry-I will preach to thee-mark me!
GLOSTER. Alack! alack the day!

LEAR. When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools-This a good block!

It were a delicate stratagem to shoe

A troop of horse with felt," &c.

The sudden exclamation, "This a good block!" struck me as very difficult to explain; but the meaning has been discovered. When Lear begins to preach, he takes off his hat, and, seeing it, his attention is diverted from his sermon to its shape. "A block" was used to express "a shape," because, of course, the shape depended upon the block on which it was made. He then goes on to speak of the "delicate stratagem" of shoeing a troop with felt, so that they might steal noiselessly upon their enemies.

The last passage on which I shall observe is one which I have more than once heard ridiculed, but which contains the finest idea in the whole play. Lear, when he is dying, says,

Now to a person who does not see the drift of the author, the

request must appear trivial; but what button was this which he asked to have undone? Reader, it was the button which drew his robe so tightly on his heart. Almost bursting in agony, he cries to have this pressure relaxed; and who cannot imagine the halfsaid, half-sighed "Thank you, sir," of the old monarch? It was the last sigh of the broken-heart, upon which his robe pressed so heavily; and masterly done was it on the part of our poet to introduce this wonderful piece of nature. Let none dare to tell me it is ridiculous: it is the very height of the sublime.

Lastly, I must speak of Mr. Nahum Tate's alteration of this play. Nothing can be more utterly tasteless. I will only speak of the catastrophe; one would have thought that when Shakspere had written,

"Vex not his ghost-O let him pass-he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer,"

none would have ventured on prolonging his life. Alas! it has proved otherwise. Mr. Tate felt that the termination of this play appealed to the heart. As he himself had never ventured on so bold a scheme as this, he determined to defend the audience from the infliction, which was powerful enough to agitate the feelings even of the great Dr. Johnson. He, therefore, cut the last scene to pieces, and substituted one from his own more innocent and unoffending pen, by which the catastrophe is entirely altered, and the whole ends like a fashionable novel. Cordelia recovers; Lear appears before the astonished audience in robust health; and gives away his daughter, who (to borrow the phraseology of the abovementioned fashionable novel) having recovered from her late serious accident (remember, reader, that of being nearly hanged), is led to the hymeneal altar by Edgar, who, we are happy to state, has rallied considerably. I wonder Mr. Tate did not conclude with that most appropriate passage, which we have no doubt the author would have lent him for so excellent a purpose :

"LEAR. Dance, Regan, dance with Cordelia and Goneril,

Down the middle, up again, poussett and cross;

Stop, Cordelia, do not tread upon her heel," &c.*

So ends, or should have ended, the tragedy ("risum teneatis amici,")

* See the Rejected Addresses. Punch's Apotheosi.

as altered by Mr. Tate, who has gained the reputation of having put a hook, as Charles Lamb excellently remarks, into the nose of this leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about more easily.

But I must take my leave of Mr. Tate, and it shall be in the words of Jaques :-"God be with you, let's meet as little as we

can.

I have now concluded the first series of these papers : when or where they will be continued, or, indeed, whether they will be continued at all, I cannot with certainty state. It will, however, be an ample compensation to me for my trouble, if I have drawn the careless reader into the habit of perusing the great poet's works with attention, or removed any obstacle from the way of the student.

C. H. H.

EARLY SORROWS.

THE golden sunset had faded into darkness before the coming night, when on a rosebud, which had that morning first opened its petals to the bright sunlight, the first dewdrop of evening fell; and it seemed as though that young flower was weeping because the brightness of its early life had so soon passed away. But when the morning light dawned again in the heaven, not only did the rose look fairer for the tears that glistened upon its beauty, but those drops from heaven sank into its root, and refreshed and strengthened it to bear the heat of another day.

It is well when the sweet flowers of thought that spring up in the young heart are watered early by the tears of gentle sorrow. For those tears, springing from a fountain yet unpoisoned by the blight of sin, are like the drops of dew that fall from heaven upon the flowers of earth, brightening their colours, refreshing their odours, and so softening the soil around them, that their roots strike deeper, and their stems grow stronger, and they wither not before the scorching heats, nor are beaten down by the rude storms of later life.

* As You like it. ACT III. Scene 2.

PUCK.

THE

CREATION OF THE TURTLE-DOVES.

(From the German of Herder.)

Two lovers sat together in the first fair dream of their wishes; but, alas! their wishes must remain a dream. The implacable Fates envied them, and their souls departed in one sigh, undivided from each other.

The first that they saw when separated from their bodies, was the Goddess of Love hovering round them. Mournful and lamenting they flew into her bosom-"Thou didst not stand by us, good Goddess; thou sawest our wishes, and didst not suffer us to enjoy them in human life. But we will yet love as shadows undivided."

"The love of shadows," said the moved Goddess, "is a mournful love. It is not indeed in my power to give ye again the life of men; but fate permits me to change ye into some form of my kingdom. Will ye be the doves who, triumphing, draw my chariot, and, in the choir of gallantry and wit, live on ambrosial food? Your faith, your love, deserveth this reward."

"Pardon, O good mother," said the lovers with one voice, "pardon us the too dangerous, too glittering reward. In the choir of wit and gallantry, in the eternal noise and brilliancy of thy conquering court, who would be surety for our faith, for our love? Should we be doves, let us go into loneliness, that in our poor nest we may be all, and remain all to one another."

The Goddess spake the word of transformation; see, there flew the first pair of cooing turtle-doves. They cooed their thanks to the Goddess, and flew to their grave, where they, with their truth, with their touching lament, would move the old Fates that they should give them back their unenjoyed human life.

But their mutual lament is even their comfort; the gentle, true love that they enjoy in their desolation, is more to them than all the joys at the throne of Venus.

Is it envy or goodness that the Fates yet ever leave to them their dove's form, and guard them from the dangerous destiny of a changeful human heart?

PUCK.