"Horatio's defire of having the bodies carried to a ftage, &c. is very well imagined, and was the best way of fatisfying the requeft of his deceafed friend: and he acts in this, and in all points, fuitably to the manly honeft character, under which he is drawn throughout the piece. Befides, it gives a fort of content to the audience, that though their favourite (which must be Hamlet) did not escape with life, yet the greatest amends will be made him, which can be in this world, viz. juftice done to his memory.

"Fortinbras comes in very naturally at the clofe of the play, and lays a very just claim to the throne of Denmark, as he had the dying voice of the prince. He in a few words gives a noble character of Hamlet, and ferves to carry off the deceafed hero from the stage with the honours due to his birth and merit." MALONE.

The rugged Pyrrhus, he, &c.] The two greatest poets of this and the laft age, Mr. Dryden, in the preface to Troilus and Creffida, and Mr. Pope, in his note on this place, have concurred in thinking that Shakspeare produced this long paffage with defign to ridicule and expofe the bombaft of the play from whence it was taken; and that Hamlet's commendation of it is purely ironical. This is become the general opinion. I think juft otherwife; and that it was given with commendation to upbraid the falfe tafte of the audience of that time, which would not fuffer them to do justice to the fimplicity and fublime of this production. And I reafon, first, from the character Hamlet gives of the play, from whence the paffage is taken. Secondly, from the paffage itself. And thirdly, from the effect it had on the audience.

Let us confider the character Hamlet gives of it. The play I remember, pleafed not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was (as I received it, and others, whofe judgement in fuch matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play, well digefted in the fcenes, fet down with as much modefty as cunning. I remember one faid, there was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury; nor no matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affection; but called it an boneft method. They who fuppofe the paffage given to be ridiculed, muft needs fuppofe this character to be

purely ironical. But if fo, it is the strangeft irony that ever was written. It pleafed not the multitude. This we muft conclude to be true, however ironical the reft be. Now the reafon given of the defigned ridicule is the fuppofed bombaft. But those were the very plays, which at that time we know took with the multitude. And Fletcher wrote a kind of Rehearsal purposely to expose them. But fay it is bombaft, and that therefore it took not with the multitude. Hamlet prefently tells us what it was that difpleafed them. There was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury; mar no matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affe&tion; but called it an honeft method. Now whether a perfon fpeaks ironically or no, when he quotes others, yet cominon fenfe requires he fhould quote what they fay. Now it could not be, if this play difpleafed becaufe of the bombaft, that thofe whom it difpleafed fhould give this reafon for their diflike. The fame inconfiitencies and abfurdities abound in every other part of Hamlet's fpeech, fuppofing it to be ironical; but take him as fpeaking his fentiments, the whole is of a piece; and to this purpofe. The play, I remember, pleased not the multitude, and the reafon was, its being wrote on the rules of the ancient drama; to which they were entire ftrangers. But, in my opinion, and in the opinion of thofe for whofe judgement I have the highest efteem, it was an excellent play, well digefted in the fcenes, i. e. where the three unities were well preferved. Set down with as much modefty as cunning, i. e. where not only the art of compofition, but the fimplicity of nature, was carefully attended to. The characters were a faithful picture of life and manners, in which nothing was overcharged into farce. But thefe qualities, which gained my efteem, loft the publick's. For I remember, one faid, There was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury, i. e. there was not, according to the mode of that time, a fool or clown, to joke, quibble, and talk freely. Nor ma matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affection, i. e. nor none of thofe paffionate, pathetick love scenes, fo effential to modern tragedy. But he called it an honeft method, i. e. he owned, however taftelefs this method of writing, on the ancient plan, was to our times, yet it was chafte and pure; the diftinguishing character of the Greek drama. I need only make one obfervation on all this; that, thus interpreted, it is the jufteft picture of a good tragedy, wrote on the ancient rules. And that I have rightly interpreted it, appears farther from what we find in the old quarto,« boneft method, as wholesome as fweet, and by very much more HAN DSOME than FINE, i. e. it had a natural beauty, but none of the fucus of falfe art.

2. A fecond proof that this fpeech was given to be admired, is from the intrinfic merit of the fpeech itself; which contains the defcription of a circumftance very happily imagined, namely,

Ilium and Priam's falling together, with the effect it had on the

destroyer.

-The hellish Pyrrhus, &c.

To, Repugnant to command.

The unnerved father falls, &c.

To, So after Pyrrhus' pause.

Now this circumftance, illuftrated with the fine fimilitude of the ftorm, is fo highly worked up, as to have well deferved a place in Virgil's fecond book of the Eneid, even though the work had been carried on to that perfection which the Roman poet had conceived.

3. The third proof is, from the effects which followed on the recital. Hamlet, his beft character, approves it; the player is deeply affected in repeating it; and only the foolish Polonius tired with it. We have faid enough before of Hamlet's fentiments. As for the player, he changes colour, and the tears start from his eyes. But our author was too good a judge of nature to make bombaft and unnatural fentiment produce fuch an effect. Nature and Horace both inftructed him:

Si vis me flere, dolendum eft

Primum ipfi tibi, tunc tua me infortunia lædent,

Telephe, vel Peleu. MALE SI MANDATA LOQUERIS,

Aut dormitabo aut ridebo.

And it may be worth obferving, that Horace gives this precept particularly to fhow, that bombaft and unnatural fentiments are incapable of moving the tender paffions, which he is directing the poet how to raise. For, in the lines juft before, he gives this rule:

Telephus Peleus, cùm pauper & exul uterque,
Projicit ampullas, & fefquipedalia verba.

Not that I would deny, that very bad lines in bad tragedies have had this effect. But then it always proceeds from one or other of these causes.

1. Either when the fubject is domeftic, and the scene lies at home; the fpectators, in this case, become interested in the fortunes of the diftreffed; and their thoughts are so much taken up with the subject, that they are not at liberty to attend to the poet; who otherwife, by his faulty fentiments and diction, would have ftifled the emotions fpringing up from a fense of the diftrefs. But this is nothing to the cafe in hand. For, as Hamlet fays:

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

2. When bad lines raise this affection, they are bad in the other extreme; low, abject, and groveling, instead of being highly figurative and fwelling; yet, when attended with a natural fimplicity, they have force enough to strike illiterate and fimple minds. The tragedies of Banks will juftify both thefe obfervations.

But if any one will ftill fay, that Shakspeare intended to repre fent a player unnaturally and fantaftically affected, we muft appeal to Hamlet, that is, to Shakspeare himfelf in this matter; who, on the reflection he makes upon the player's emotion, in order to excite his own revenge, gives not the leaft hint that the player was unnaturally or injudicioufly moved. On the contrary, his fine defcription of the actor's emotion fhows, he thought just other wife : this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of paffion,
Could force his foul fo to his own conceit,
That from her working all his wijage wan'd:
Tears in his eyes, diffraction in his afpect,

A broken voice, &c.

And indeed had Hamlet efteemed this emotion any thing unnatural, it had been a very improper circumftance to fpur him to his purpose.

As Shakspeare has here fhown the effects which a fine defcription of nature, heightened with all the ornaments of art, had upon an intelligent player, whose business habituates him to enter intimately and deeply into the characters of men and manners, and to give nature its free workings on all occafions; fo he has artfully shown what effects the very fame fcene would have upon a quite different man, Polonius; by nature, very weak and very artificial [two qualities, though commonly enough joined in life, yet generally fo much difguifed as not to be feen by common eyes to be together; and which an ordinary poet durft not have brought fo near one another]; by difcipline, practifed in a fpecies of wit and cloquence, which was ftiff, forced, and pedantic; and by trade a politician, and therefore, of confequence, without any of the affecting notices of humanity. Such is the man whom Shakspeare has judicioufly chofen to reprefent the falfe tafte of that audience which had condemned the play here reciting. When the actor comes to the finest and moft pathetic part of the fpeech, Polonius cries out This is too long; on which Hamlet, in contempt of his ill judgement, replies, It fhall to the barber's with thy beard; [intimating that, by this judgement, it appeared that all his wif dom lay in his length of beard]. Prythee, fay on. He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry [the common entertainment of that time, as well as this, of the people] or he fleeps; fay on. And yet this man of modern tafte, who flood all this time perfectly unmoved with the forcible imagery of the relator, no fooner hears, amongst many good things, one quaint and fantastical word, put in, I fuppofe, purpofely for this end, than he profeffes his appro bation of the propriety and dignity of it. That's good. Mobled queen is good. On the whole then, I think, it plainly appears,

that the long quotation is not given to be ridiculed and laughed at, but to be admired. The character given of the play, by Hamlet, cannot be ironical. The paffage itfelf is extremely beautiful. It has the effect that all pathetick relations, naturally written, fhould have; and it is condemned, or regarded with indifference, by one of a wrong, unnatural tafte. From hence (to obferve it by the way) the actors, in their reprefentation of this play, may learn how this fpeech ought to be fpoken, and what appearance Hamlet ought to affume during the recital.

That which fupports the common opinion, concerning this paffage, is the turgid expreffion in fome parts of it; which, they think, could never be given by the poet to be commended. We shall therefore, in the next place, examine the lines most obnoxious to cenfure, and fee how much, allowing the charge, this will make for the induction of their conclusion:

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage firikes wide,

But with the whiff and wind of his fell fword
The unnerved father falls.

And again,

Out, out, thou ftrumpet fortune! All you gods,
In general fynod, take away her power:

Break all the Spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends.

Now whether thefe be bombaft or not, is not the question; but whether Shakspeare efteemed them fo. That he did not fo esteem them appears from his having ufed the very fame thoughts in the fame expreffions, in his beft plays, and given them to his principal characters, where he aims at the fublime. As in the following paffages:

Troilus, in Troilus and Creffila, far outftrains the execution of Pyrrhus's fword in the character he gives of Hector's:

"When many times the caitive Grecians fall

"Even in the fan and wind of your fair fword,
"You bid them rife and live."

Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra, rails at fortune in the fame

manner:

"No, let me speak, and let me rail fo high,

"That the falfe hufwife Fortune break her wheel,
"Provok'd at my offence."

But another ufe may be made of thefe quotations; a discovery of this recited play: which, letting us into a circumftance of our author's life (as a writer) hitherto unknown, was the reafon I have been fo large upon this question. I think then it appears, from what has been faid, that the play in difpute was Shakipeare's own; and that this was the occafion of writing it. He was defirous, as