Ilium and Príam'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' paufe.

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 best 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 bombast 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 just 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 cafe, become interested in the fortunes of the diftreffed; and their thoughts are fo 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 fenfe 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, inftead 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 justify both thefe obfervations.

But if any one will ftill fay, that Shakspeare intended to reprefent a player unnaturally and fantaftically affected, we must appeal to Hamlet, that is, to Shakspeare himself 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 juft otherwife:

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 fhown 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 so near one another]; by difcipline, practifed in a fpecies of wit and eloquence, 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 judiciously 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 fall 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]. Pr'ythee, 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 stood 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 approbation 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, should 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 representation of this play, may learn how this fpeech ought to be spoken, 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 conclufion:

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage ftrikes wide,

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

And again,

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

Break all the fpokes 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 queftion; 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 Creffida, 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 fpeak, and let me rail fo high,

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

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

foon as he had found his ftrength, of restoring the chafteness and regularity of the ancient ftage: and therefore compofed this tragedy on the model of the Greek drama, as may be seen by throwing fo much action into relation. But his attempt proved fruitless; and the raw, unnatural tafte, then prevalent, forced him back again into his old Gothic manner. For which he took this revenge his audience. WARBURTON.

upon

I formerly thought that the lines which have given rife to the foregoing obfervations, were extracted from fome old play, of which it appeared to me probable that Chriftopher Marlowe was the author; but whatever Shak fpeare's view in producing them may have been, I am now decidedly of opinion they were written by himself, not in any former unfuccefsful piece, but exprefsly for the play of Hamlet. It is obfervable that what Dr. Warburton calls the fine fimilitude of the ftorm," is likewise found in our poet's Venus and Adonis. MALONE.

The praife which Hamlet beftows on this piece is certainly dif fembled, and agrees very well with the character of madness, which, before witneffes, he thought it neceffary to fupport. The fpeeches before us have fo little merit, that nothing but an affectation of fingularity, could have influenced Dr. Warburton to undertake their defence. The poet, perhaps, meant to exhibit a just resemblance of fome of the plays of his own age, in which the faults were too general and too glaring to permit a few fplendid paffages to atone for them. The player knew his trade, and fpoke the lines in an affecting manner, because Hamlet had declared them to be pathetick, or might be in reality a little moved by them; for," There are lefs degrees of nature (fays Dryden) by which fome faint emotions of pity and terror are raised in us, as a lefs engine will raise a lefs proportion of weight, though not fo much as one of Archimedes' making." The mind of the prince, it must be confessed, was fitted for the reception of gloomy ideas, and his tears were ready at a flight folicitation. It is by no means proved, that Shakspeare has employed the fame thoughts clothed in the fame expressions, in his best plays. If he bids the falfe hufwife Fortune break her wheel, he does not defire her to break all its pokes; nay, even its periphery, and make ufe of the nave afterwards for fuch an immeasurable caft. Though if what Dr. Warburton has faid fhould be found in any inftance to be exactly true, what can we infer from thence, but that Shakfpeare was fometimes wrong in fpite of conviction, and in the hurry of writing committed thofe very faults which his judgement could detect in others? Dr. Warburton is inconfiftent in his affertions concerning the literature of Shakspeare. In a note on Troilus and Creffida, he affirms, that his want of learning kept him from being acquainted with the writings of Homer; and, in this inftance, would fuppofe him capable of producing a complete tragedy written

on the ancient rules; and that the speech before us had fufficient merit to entitle it to a place in the fecond book of Virgil's Eneid, even though the work had been carried to that perfection which the Roman peet had conceived.*

Had Shakspeare made one unsuccessful attempt in the manner of the ancients (that he had any knowledge of their rules, remains to be proved,) it would certainly have been recorded by contemporary writers, among whom Ben Jonfon would have been the first. Had his darling ancients been unfkilfully imitated by a rival poet, he would at least have preserved the memory of the fact, to show how unfafe it was for any one, who was not as thorough a fcholar as himself, to have meddled with their facred remains.

"Within that circle none durft walk but he." He has reprefented Inigo Jones as being ignorant of the very names of those claffick authors, whofe architecture he undertook to correct; in his Poetafter he has in feveral places hinted at our poet's injudicious ufe of words, and feems to have pointed his ridicule more than once at fome of his defcriptions and characters. It is true that he has praised him, but it was not while that praife could have been of any service to him; and pofthumous applaufe is always to be had on eafy conditions. Happy it was for Shakspeare, that he took nature for his guide, and, engaged in the warm purfuit of her beauties, left to Jonfon the repofitories of learning: fo has he escaped a conteft which might have rendered his life uneafy, and bequeathed to our poffeffion the more valuable copies from nature herfelf: for Shakspeare was (fays Dr. Hurd, in his notes on Horace's Art of Poetry) the first that broke through the bondage of claffical fuperftition. And he owed this felicity, as he did fome others, to his want of what is called the advantage of a learned education. Thus uninfluenced by the weight of early prepoffeffion, he ftruck at once into the road of nature and common fense: and without defigning, without knowing it, hath left us in his hiftorical plays, with all their anomalies, an exacter resemblance of the Athenian ftage than is any where to be found in its moft profeffed admirers and copyifts." Again, ibid: "It is poffible, there are, who think a want of reading, as well as vaft fuperiority of genius, hath con

It appears to me not only that Shakspeare had the favourable opinion of these lines which he makes Hamlet exprefs, but that they were extracted from fome play which he, at a more early period, had either produced or projected upon the ftory of Dido and Eneas. The verfes recited are far fuperior to thofe of any coeval writer: the parallel paffage in Marlowe and Nathe's Dido will not bear the comparison. Poffibly, indeed, it might have been his first attempt, before the divinity that lodg'd within him had inftructed him to defpife the tumid and unnatural ftyle fo much and so unjustly admired in his predeceffors or contemporaries, and which he afterward fo happily ridiculed in "the fwaggering vaine of Ancient Piftol." RITSON.

VOL. XV.

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