Mercutio is one of the instances which strikingly show the excess of Shakespeare's powers above his performances. Though giving us more than any other man, still he seems to have given but a small part of himself. For we feel that he could have gone on indefinitely with the same exquisite redundancy of life and wit which he has started in Mercutio. As aiming rather to instruct us with character than to entertain us with talk, he lets off just enough of the latter to disclose the former, and then stops, leaving the impression of an inexhaustible abundance withheld to give scope for something better. From the nature of the subject he had to leave unsatisfied the desire which in Mercutio is excited. Delightful as the man is, the Poet valued, and makes us value, his room more than his company. It has been said that he was obliged to kill off Mercutio, lest Mercutio should kill the play. And, sure enough, it is not apparent how he could have kept Mercutio and Tybalt in the play without spoiling it, nor how he could have kept them out without killing them: for so long as they live they must needs have a chief hand in whatever is going on about them; and they can scarce have a hand in any thing, without turning it, the one into a comedy, the other into a butchery. The Poet, however, so manages them and their fate as to aid rather than interrupt the proper interest of the piece; the impression of their death, strong as it is, being overcome by the sympathy awakened in us with the living.

Mercutio is a perfect embodiment of animal spirits acting in and through the brain. So long as the life is in him his blood must dance, and so long as the blood dances the brain and tongue must play. His veins seem filled with sparkling champagne. Always revelling in the conscious fulness of his resources, he pours out and pours out, heedless whether he speaks sense or nonsense; nay, his very stumblings seem designed as triumphs of agility; he studies, apparently, for failures, as giving occasion for further trials, and thus serving at once to provoke his skill and to set it off. Full of

the most companionable qualities, he often talks loosely indeed, but not profanely; and even in his loosest talk there is a subtilty and refinement both of nature and of breeding, that mark him for the prince of good fellows. Nothing could more finely evince the essential frolicsomeness of his composition, than that, with his ruling passion strong in death, he should play the wag in the face of his grim enemy, as if to live and to jest were the same thing with him.

Of Mercutio's wit it were vain to attempt an analysis. From a fancy as quick and aerial as the Aurora Borealis, the most unique and graceful combinations come forth with almost inconceivable facility and felicity. If wit consists in a peculiar briskness, airiness, and apprehensiveness of spirit, catching, as by instinct, the most remote and delicate affinities, and putting things together most unexpectedly and at the same time most appositely, then it can hardly be denied that Mercutio is the prince of wits as well as of good fellows.

I have always felt a special comfort in the part of Friar Laurence. How finely his tranquillity contrasts with the surrounding agitation! And how natural it seems that from that very agitation he should draw lessons of tranquillity! Calm, thoughtful, benevolent, withdrawing from the world, that he may benefit society the more for being out of it, his presence and counsel in the play are as oil poured, yet poured in vain, on troubled waters. Sympathizing quietly yet deeply with the very feelings in others which in the stillness of thought he has subdued in himself, the storms that waste society only kindle in him the sentiments that raise him above them; while his voice, issuing from the heart of humanity, speaks peace, but cannot give it, to the passions that are raging around him.

Schlegel has remarked with his usual discernment on thẻ skill with which the Poet manages to alleviate the miracle of the sleeping-potion; and how, by throwing an air of

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mysterious wisdom round the Friar, he renders us the more apt to believe strange things concerning him; representing him as so conjunctive and inward with Nature, that incredulity as to what he does is in a great measure forestalled by impressions of reverence for his character. "How," says he, "does the Poet dispose us to believe that Friar Laurence possesses such a secret? He exhibits him first in a garden, collecting herbs, and descanting on their wonderful virtues. The discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning: he sees everywhere in Nature emblems of the moral world; the same wisdom with which he looks through ✔ her has also made him master of the human heart. In this way, what would else have an ungrateful appearance, becomes the source of a great beauty."

Much fault has been found with the winding-up of this play, that it does not stop with the death of Juliet. Looking merely to the uses of the stage, it might indeed be better so; but Shakespeare wrote for humanity as well as, yea, rather than, for the stage. And as the evil fate of the lovers springs from the bitter feud of their Houses, and from a general stifling of nature under a hard crust of artificial manners, he wisely represents their fate as reacting upon and removing the cause. We are thus given to see and feel that they have not suffered in vain; and the heart has something to mitigate and humanize its over-pressure of grief. The absorbing, devouring selfishness of society generates the fiercest rancour between the leading families, and that rancour issues in the death of the very members through whom they had thought most to advance their rival pretensions; earth's best and noblest creatures are snatched away, because, by reason of their virtue, they can best afford to die, and because, for the same reason, their death will be most bitterly deplored. The good old Friar indeed thought that by the marriage of the lovers the rancour of their Houses would be healed. But a Wiser than he knew that the deepest touch of sorrow was required, to

awe and melt their proud, selfish hearts; that nothing short of the most afflicting bereavement, together with the feeling that themselves had both caused it and deserved it, could teach them rightly to "prize the breath they share with human kind," and remand them to the impassioned attachments of nature. Accordingly the hatred that

seemed immortal is buried in the tomb of the faithful lovers; families are reconciled, society renovated, by the storm that has passed upon them; the tyranny of selfish custom is rebuked and broken up by the insurrection of nature which itself has provoked; tears flow, hearts are softened, hands joined, truth, tenderness, and piety inspired, by the noble example of devotion and self-sacrifice which stands before them. Such is the sad but wholesome lesson to be gathered from the story of "Juliet and her Romeo."

It may have been remarked, that I habitually speak of Shakespeare's men and women as if they were veritable flesh-and-blood persons, actual "travellers between life and death," just as we are. Whatever of folly or absurdity there may be in such a course, I must plead guilty to it. If it be asked why I so speak of them, the answer is, because I cannot help it. To me their virtues are as true as those of the friends I have loved and mourned, their sorrows as real and as close to the heart as any I have felt or pitied. I have much the same life in their society as in that of my breathing fellow-travellers, with this addition, that I know sickness cannot wither their bloom, nor death make spoil of their sweetness. Sometimes indeed they appear to me, with all their thoughts and feelings, more real, more living, than the human forms I see about me, and even than myself. So it is with the characters of this play; so it is with those of many others. And as often as I renew my intercourse with them, I am reminded of an incident related by Wordsworth in one of his smaller poems. An eminent British artist being on a visit at the Escurial, a

venerable monk was guiding him through the convent, and showing him the paintings; and, as they both stood with eyes intent on Titian's picture of the Last Supper,

"The hoary Father in the Stranger's ear

Breathed out these words: Here daily do we sit,
Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here,
While thinking of my brethren, dead, dispersed,
Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze
Upon this solemn company unmoved

By shock of circumstance or lapse of years,
Until I cannot but believe that they,

They are in truth the substance, we the shadows."

JULIUS CAESAR.

THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CESAR was first printed in the folio of 1623. None of the plays in that inestimable volume have reached us with the text in a sounder and clearer state; there being few passages that give an editor any trouble, none that are very troublesome.

The Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual, 1876, argues somewhat strenuously to the point that "this play, as we have it, is an abridgment of Shakespeare's play, made by Ben Jonson." In support of his theory he alleges, and truly, that Jonson did in fact exercise his hand more or less in altering and refitting other men's plays. He also points out the fact, for such it is,—that the number of short lines or broken verses in Julius Cæsar is uncommonly large. And he cites several words and phrases, such as quality and kind," "bear me hard," "chew upon this," &c., which do not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare; while the same words and phrases, or something very like them, are met with in Jonson's plays. Still more to the purpose, he adduces a passage in Act iii., scene 1, which is evidently referred to in Jonson's Discoveries, 1637, and which, in all

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