chastest compositions of this nature. The young female is pleasantly interested for the fate of Oriental queens, for Zobeide, or the heroine of Almoran and Hamet; but she does not put herself in their place; she is not absorbed in their pains or their pleasures; she does not identify her feelings with theirs, as she too probably does in the case of Sophia Western, and the Princess of Cleves. Books of the former description innocently invigorate the fancy, those of the latter convey a contagious sickliness to the mind. The one raise harmless wonder or inoffensive merriment; the other awaken ideas at best unprofitable. From the flights of the one, we are willing to descend to the rationality of common life; from the seductions of the other, we are disgusted at returning to its insipidity. There is always some useful instruction in those great original works of invention, whether poetry or romance, which transmit a faithful living picture of the manners of the age and country in which the scene is laid. It is this which, independently of its other merits, diffuses that inexpressible charm over the Odyssey; a species of enchantment, which is not afforded by any other poem in the world. This, in a less degree, is also one of the striking merits of Don Quixote. And this, after having soared so high, if we may descend so low, is the principal recommendation of the Arabian Tales. These tales also, though faulty in some respects, possess another merit which we should be glad to see transferred to some of the novels of a country nearer home. We learn from these Arabian stories, and indeed from most of the works of imagination of the Mahometan authors, what was the specific religion of the people about whom they write; how much they made religion enter into the ordinary concerns of life; and how observant persons professing religion were of its peculiarities and its worship. It is but justice to observe, how far more deeply mischievous the French novel writers are, than those of our own country; they not only seduce the heart through the senses, and corrupt it through the medium of the imagination, but fatally strike at the very root and being of all virtue, by annihilating all belief in that religion which is its only vital source and seminal principle. SHAKSPEARE. But lessons of a nobler kind may be extracted from some works which promise nothing better than mere entertainment, and which will not, to ordinary readers, appear susceptible of any higher purpose. In the hands of a judicious preceptor, many of Shakspeare's tragedies, especially of his historical pieces, and still more such as are rendered peculiarly interesting by local circumstances, by British manners, and by the introduction of royal characters who once filled the English throne, will furnish themes on which to ground much appropriate and instructive conversation. Those mixed characters especially, which he has drawn with such a happy intuition into the human mind, in which some of the worst actions are committed by persons not destitute of good dispositions and amiable qualities, but overwhelmed by the storm of unresisted passion, sinking under strong temptation, or yielding to powerful flattery, are far more instructive in the perusal than the "faultless monsters," or the heroes of unmixed perfection, of less skilful dramatists. The agitations, for instance, of the timorous Thane, a man not destitute of generous sentiments; but of a high and aspiring mind, stimulated by vain credulity, tempting opportunity, and an ambitious wife,-goaded by the woman he loved, to the crime he hated,-grasping at the crown, but abhorring the sin which was to procure it ;—the agonies of guilt combating with the sense of honouragonies not merely excited by the vulgar dread of detection and of punishment which would have engrossed an ordinary mind, but sharpened by unappeasable remorse; which remorse, however, proves no hindrance to the commission of fresh crimes-crimes which succeed each other as numerously, and as rapidly, as the visionary progeny of Banquo. At first, What he would highly, he would holily: but a familiarity with horrors soon cured this delicacy: and in his subsequent and multiplied murders, necessity became apology. The whole presents an awful lesson on the terrible consequences of listening to the first slight suggestion of sin, and strikingly exemplifies that from harbouring criminal thoughts, to the forming black designs, and perpetrating the most atrocious deeds, the mind is led by a natural progress, and an unresisted rapidity. The conflicting passions of the capricious Lear! tender and affectionate in the extreme, but whose irregular affections were neither controlled by nature, reason, or justice; a character weak and vehement, fond and cruel; whose kindness was determined by no principle; whose mind, governed by no fixed sense of right, but vibrating with the accident of the moment, and the caprice of the predominant humour; sacrificing the virtuous child, whose sincerity should have secured his affection, to the preposterous flattery of her unnatural sisters. These highly wrought scenes do not merely excite in the reader a barren sympathy for the pangs of self-reproach, of destitute age, and suffering royalty, but inculcate a salutary abhorrence of adulation and falsehood; a useful caution against partial and unjust judgment; a sound admonition against paternal injustice and filial ingratitude. The beautiful and touching reflections of Henry IV. in those last soulsearching moments, when the possession of a crown became nothing, and the unjust ambition by which he had obtained it, everything. Yet, exhibiting a prince still so far retaining to the last the cautious policy of his character, as to mix his concern for the state, and his affection for his son, with the natural dissimulation of his own temper; and blending the finest sentiments on the uncertainty of human applause and earthly prosperity, with a watchful attention to confine the knowledge of the unfair means by which he had obtained the crown to the heir who was to possess it. The wily politician predominating to the last moment, and manifesting rather regret than repentance; disclosing that the assumed sanctity with which he had been preparing for a crusade, was only a project to check those inquiries into his title to the crown, to which peace and rest might lead; and exhorting the prince, with a foresceing subtlety which little became a dying monarch, to keep up quarrels with foreign powers, in order to wear out the memory of domestic usurpation; all this presents a striking exhibition of a superior mind, so long habituated to the devious paths of worldly wisdom and crooked policy, so as to be unable to desert them even in the pangs of dissolution. The pathetic soliloquies of the repentant Wolsey, fallen from the pinnacle of wealth and power to a salutary degradation! A disgrace, which restored him to reason, and raised him to religion; which destroyed his fortune, but rescued his soul. His counsels to the rising statesman Cromwell, on the perils of ambition, and the precariousness of royal favour; the vanity of all attachment which has not religion for its basis; the weakness of all fidelity which has not the fear of God for its principle ; and the perilous end of that favour of the courtier, which is enjoyed at the dear price of his "integrity to heaven." The pernicious power of flattery on a female mind, so skilfully exemplified in that memorable scene in which the bloody Richard conquers the aversion of the princess Anne to the murderer of her husband, and of all his royal race! The deplorable error of the feeble-minded princess, in so far forgetting his crimes in his compliments, as to consent to the monstrous union with the murderer! Can there be a more striking exemplification of a position we have ventured so frequently to establish, of the dangers to which vanity is liable, and of the miseries to which flattery leads? The reflections of Henry VI. and of Richard II. on the cares and duties, the unsatisfactoriness and disappointment, attending great situations, the vanity of human grandeur while enjoyed, and the uncertain tenure by which it is held! These fine soliloquies preach powerfully to the hearts of all in high stations, but most powerfully to those in the highest. The terribly instructive death-bed of Cardinal Beaufort, whose silence, like the veil in the celebrated picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, thrown over the father's face, penetrates the soul more by what it conceals, than could have been effected by anything that its removal might have discovered. These, and a thousand other instances, too various to be enumerated, too obvious to require specifying, and too beautiful to stand in need of comment, may, when properly selected, and judiciously animadverted on, not only delight the imagination, and gratify the feelings, but carry instruction to the heart. The royal pupil may discern in Shakspeare an originality which has no parallel. He exhibits humour the most genuine, and, what is far more extraordinary, propriety of sentiment, and delicacies of conduct, where, from his low opportunities, failure had been pardonable. A fidelity to character so minute, that it seems rather the accuracy of individual history, marking the incidental deviations, and delineating the casual humours of actual life, than the invention of the poet. Shakspeare has seized every turn and flexure of the ever-varying mind of man in all its fluctuating forms; touched it in all its changeful shades, and marked it in all its nicer gradations, as well as its more abrupt varieties. He exhibits the whole internal structure of man; uniting the correctness of anatomy with the exactness of delineation, the graces of proportion, and often the highest beauty of colouring. But, with these excellences, the works of this most unequal of all poets contain so much that is vulgar, so much that is absurd, and so much that is impure; so much indecent levity, false wit, and gross description, that he should only be read in parcels, and with the nicest selection. His more exceptionable pieces should not be read at all; and even of the best, much may be omitted. But the qualified perusal here suggested may, on account of his wonderful acquaintance with the human heart, be attended with peculiar advantages to readers of the class in question, one of whose chief studies should be that of mankind, and who, from the circumstance of station and sex, have few direct and safe means of acquiring a knowledge of the world, and an acquaintance with the various characters which compose it. To the three celebrated Greek tragedians we have already adverted, as uniting, with the loftiest powers of genius, a general prevalence of virtuous, and often even of pious sentiments. The scenes with which they abound, of meritorious, of suffering, of imprudent, of criminal, of rash, and of penitent princes; of royalty under every vicissitude of passion, of character, and circumstance, will furnish an interesting and not unprofitable entertainment. And Mr. Potter has put the English reader in possession of these ancient bards, of Eschylus especially, in a manner highly honourable to his own taste and learning. Most of the tragedies of Racine are admirably written, and are unexceptionable in almost all respects. They possess, though conveyed in the poor vehicle of French versification,* all the dramatic requisites, and to their author we can safely ascribe one merit superior even to that of the critical exactness with which he has regulated the unities of his plays by Aristotle's clock; we mean his constant care not to offend against modesty or religion. His Athalie exhibits at once a chef-d'œuvre of the dramatic art, a proof of what exquisite poetic beauties the Bible histories are susceptible; a salutary warning to princes on the miseries attendant upon treachery, impiety, and ambition; and a lively instance, of not only the private value, but the great political importance, of eminently able and pious ministers of religion. If the Italian language should form a part of the royal education, we might name Metastasio as quite inoffensive in a moral view, though necessarily mixing something of the flimsy texture of the opera with the severer graces of Melpomene. His muse possesses an equable and steady pinion: if she seldom soars into sublimity, she never sinks to meanness; she is rather elegant and pleasing than vigorous or lofty. His sacred dramas are particularly excellent, and are scarcely less interesting to the reader of taste than of piety. They are also exempt from a certain monotony, which makes his other pieces too much to resemble each other. It is with no small regret that, persuaded as we are that England is the rich native soil of dramatic genius, we are driven to the painful necessity of recommending exotics in preference to the indigenous productions of our own fruitful clime. The truth is, that though we possess in our language admirable single pieces, yet our tragic poets have afforded scarce any instances, except Milton in his exquisite Comus and Samson Agonistes, and Mason in his chaste and classic dramas, in which we can conscientiously recommend their entire, unweeded volumes, as never deviating from * It is a curious circumstance in the history of French dramatic poetry, that the measure used by their best poets in their sublimest tragedies is the anapastic, which in our language, is not only the lightest and most undignified of all the poetic measures, but is still more degraded by being chiefly applied to burlesque subjects. It is amusing to an English ear, to hear the Brutus of Racine, the Cid of Corneille, and the Orosmane and Orestes of Voltaire, declaim, philosophise, sigh, and rave, in the precise measure of A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall. + Thomson's tragedies furnish the best exception to this remark, of any with which the author is acquainted. that correctness and purity which should be the inseparable attendant on the tragic muse. We shall indeed find not only that virtuous scenes, and even pious sentiments, are scattered throughout most of our popular tragedies, but that the general moral also is frequently striking and impressive. Its end, however, is often defeated by the means employed to accomplish it. In how many, for instance, of the favourite tragedies of Rowe and Otway, which are most frequently acted, do we find passages, and even whole scenes, of a directly contrary tendency; passages calculated to awaken those very passions which it was the professed object of the author to counteract! First raising a combustion of desire, With some cold moral they would quench the fire. When we contrast the purity, and I had almost said the piety of the works of the tragic poets of pagan Greece, and even the more select ones of popish France, with some of the pieces of the most shining bards of protestant Britain, do they not all appear to have been in an inverse ratio with the advantages which their authors enjoyed? It may be objected that, in speaking of poetic composition, we have dwelt so long, and almost so exclusively, on the drama. It would indeed have been far more pleasant to range at large through the whole flowery fields of the muses, where we could have gathered much that is sweet, and much that is salutary. But we must not indulge in excursions which are merely pleasurable. We have, on all occasions, made it a point not to recommend books because they are pleasant, or even good, but because they are appropriate. And as it is notorious that gorgeous tragedy With sceptred pall comes sweeping by, that she prefers the splendid scenes of royal courts to the retired walks of private life; that she delights to exemplify virtue, to designate vice, or dignify calamity, by choosing her personages among kings and princes; we therefore thought it might not be altogether unuseful, in touching on this topic, to distinguish between such authors as are safe, and such as are dangerous; by mentioning those of the one class with deserved commendation, and by generally passing over the names of the others in silence. CHAPTER XXXI. Books of Instruction, &c. Lord Bacon, &c. IN the "prophet of unborn science," who brought into use a logic almost entirely new, and who rejected the study of words for that of things, the royal pupil may see the way, rarely used before his time, of arguing by induction; a logic grounded upon observation, fact and experiment. To estimate the true value of Lord Bacon, we should recollect what was the state of learning when he appeared; we should remember with what a mighty hand he overthrew the despotism of that absurd system which had |
