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himself, let us allow him (Shakspere) great | merit as a comic writer, greater still as a poet, but little, very little, as a tragedian. And is, then, poor Shakespeare to be excluded from the number of great tragedians? He is; but let him be banished, like Homer from the republic of Plato, with marks of distinction and veneration; and may his forehead, like the Grecian bard's, be bound with an honourable wreath of everblooming flowers." There can be no doubt of the paternity of this production. The same Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow produced, in the same year, 'A Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare's Characters;' and this book has gone, with the appendage of new characters, through many editions; and is allied, moreover, to Essays on this and that Shaksperean thing, and a "perilous shot" indeed in 'An Essay on the Faults of Shakespeare.' We shall give no more than a sentence:-"I am inclined to believe, and shall now endeavour to illustrate that the greatest blemishes in Shakespeare have proceeded from his want of consummate taste. Having no perfect discernment, proceeding from rational investigation, of the true cause of beauty in poetical composition, he had never established in his mind any system of regular process, or any standard of dramatic excellence." Yet this solemn person, who thinks that Shakspere had never established in his mind any system of regular process, had no perfect discernment of the true cause of beauty, has the temerity to write a book of four hundred pages on his dramatic characters. Something of a very different description was produced three years after: 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff.' The author was MAURICE MORGANN, once Under Secretary of State. The book is far above the age. The author is a thinker, and one who has been taught to think by Shakspere. Take an example: "In the groups of other poets, the parts which are not seen do not, in fact, exist. Those characters in Shakespeare, which are seen only in part, are yet capable of being unfolded and understood in the whole; every part being, in fact, relative,

and inferring all the rest." The 'Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare,' by Thomas Whately, published in 1785, is something different from the performance of the Scotch professor. What could induce his eminent relation, who republished it in 1839, to write thus ?-"Mr. Whately, it should be observed, is merely pointing out that such and such speches do indicate character; not that they were, in each case, written with that design. If, then, they really are characteristic, the criticism is fully borne out, whatever may have been the design of Shakespeare. I doubt whether Shakespeare ever had any thought at all of making his personages speak characteristically. In most instances, I conceiveprobably in all—he drew characters correctly, becouse he could not avoid it, and would never have attained, in that department, such excellence as he has, if he had made any studied efforts for it. And the same, probably, may be said of Homer, and of those other writers who have excelled the most in delineating characters." Was the 'Paul preaching at Athens,' with the Apostle characterised in his majesty, the sceptic in his doubt, and the enthusiast in his veneration, (characters marked as deeply as the Richard and Macbeth upon which the relation of the Archbishop of Dublin writes,)—was this produced by Raffaelle because he could not avoid it? We would willingly give an extract or two from this clever book, but its republication renders such unnecessary. There is one more work, and one only, to which we may point as being superior to the ordinary criticism of that age-" the butterwoman's rank to market." It is Mr. Whiter's 'Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare,' published in 1794.

Amidst the crowd of writers, from the middle to the end of the eighteenth century, who were adding to the mass of comment upon Shakspere, whether in the shape of essay, letter, poem, philosophical analysis, illustration, there was one who, not especially devoting himself to Shaksperean criticism, had a considerable influence in the gradual formation of a sound national taste. The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' by

THOMAS PERCY, originally published in 1765, | kept possession of the English stage; which showed to the world that there was something in the early writers beyond the use to which they had been applied by Shakspere's commentators. In these fragments it would be seen that England, from the earliest times, had possessed an inheritance of real poetry; and that he who had breathed a new life into the forms of the past, and had known how to call up the heroes of chivalry,-to

"Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage," was not without models of earnest passion and noble simplicity in the ancient ballads. The publication of these 'Reliques' led the way, though slowly, to the study of our elder poets; and every advance in this direction was a step towards the more extended knowledge, and the better understanding, of Shakspere himself. Percy, in one part of his first volume, collected "such ballads as are quoted by Shakespeare, or contribute in any degree to illustrate his writings." He did this with his usual good taste; and every one knows with what skill he connected in the tale of 'The Friar of Orders Grey' those "innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads" which we find dispersed through the plays of Shakspere. In his introduction to this division of his work he gives some very sensible observations upon the origin of the English stage. In the following remarks on the Histories of our poet he takes a different, and we think a juster, view of their origin and purpose than Malone and the other commentators. Although Percy puts his own opinions cautiously, if not timidly, it is clear that he had higher notions of Shakspere as an artist than those who were arrogating to themselves the merit of having made him "popular." He who holds that it is "the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance" is not far from a right appreciation of Shakspere :- But, while Shakespeare was the favourite dramatic poet, his Histories had such superior merit, that he might well claim to be the chief, if not the only, historic dramatist that

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gives a strong support to the tradition mentioned by Gildon, that, in a conversation with Ben Jonson, our bard vindicated his historical plays, by urging that, as he had found 'the nation in general very ignorant of history, he wrote them in order to instruct the people in this particular.' This is assigning not only a good motive, but a very probable reason, for his preference of this species of composition, since we cannot doubt but his illiterate countrymen would not only want such instruction when he first began to write, notwithstanding the obscure dramatic chroniclers who preceded him, but also that they would highly profit by his admirable Lectures on English History so long as he continued to deliver them to his audience. And, as it implies no claim to his being the first who introduced our chronicles on the stage, I see not why the tradition should be rejected.

"Upon the whole, we have had abundant proof that both Shakespeare and his contemporaries considered his Histories, or Historical Plays, as of a legitimate distinct species, sufficiently separate from Tragedy and Comedy; a distinction which deserves the particular attention of his critics and commentators, who, by not adverting to it, deprive him of his proper defence and best vindication for his neglect of the unities and departure from the classical dramatic forms. For, if it be the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance, then we ought not to try Shakespeare's Histories by the general laws of tragedy or comedy. Whether the rule itself be vicious or not, is another inquiry: but, certainly, we ought to examine a work only by those principles according to which it was composed. This would save a deal of impertinent criticism.”

'The History of English Poetry,' by THOMAS WARTON, published in 1774, was another of those works which advanced the study of our early literature in the spirit of elegant scholarship as opposed to bibliographical pedantry. Warton was an ardent lover of Shakspere, as we may collect from

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several little poems; but he was scarcely cal Essayists' are many papers on Shakout of the trammels of the classical school. His education had taught him that Shakspere worked without art, and indeed he held that most of the Elizabethan poets so worked:"It may here be added that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry,' were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition; nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception. And this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction; a circumstance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets, and which soon degenerated into the opposite extreme of dissonance and asperity. Selection and discrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in pursuit of universal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of imaginary method. In the same scene he descends from his meridian of the noblest tragic sublimity to puns and quibbles, to the meanest merriment of a plebeian farce. In the midst of his dignity he resembles his own Richard II., the skipping king, who sometimes, discarding the state of a monarch,

'Mingled his royalty with carping fools.'

He seems not to have seen any impropriety in the most abrupt transitions, from dukes to buffoons, from senators to sailors, from counsellors to constables, and from kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak

'Quantum vertice ad auras Ethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.'" All this is prettily said; but it would not have been said if Warton had lived half a century later. Scattered about the periodi

spere, worth consulting by the student, which,
if not very valuable in themselves, indicate
at least the progress of opinion. Joseph
Warton, in 'The Adventurer,' where he
reviews 'The Tempest' and 'Lear,' is a great
stickler for the unities. Mackenzie, in 'The
Mirror,' has a higher reverence for Shak-
spere, and a more philosophical contempt for
the application of the ancient rules to works
having their own forms of vitality. Cum-
berland, in 'The Observer,' contrasts 'Mac-
beth' and 'Richard III.;' and he compares
Shakspere with Eschylus in a way which
exhibits the resources of his scholarship and
the elegance of his taste. All the fragmen-
tary critical opinions upon Shakspere, from
the time of Johnson's Preface to the end of
the century, exhibit some progress towards
the real faith; some attempt to cast off not
only the authority of the ancient rules of
art, but the smaller authority of that lower
school of individual judgment, which the
Shaksperean commentators had been prop-
ping up, as well as they could, upon their
own weak shoulders. Coleridge has well
described their pretensions to authority:-
:-
"Every critic, who has or has not made a
collection of black-letter books,-in itself a
useful and respectable amusement,-puts on
the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and
strides at once from an illustrator into a
supreme judge, and, blind and deaf, fills his
three-ounce phial at the waters of Niagara ;
and determines positively the greatness of
the cataract to be neither more nor less than
his three-ounce phial has been able to re-
ceive." Such a critic was Mr. Francis Douce;
who has been at the pains of making a
formal essay 'On the Anachronisms and
The words by which Mr. Douce describes
some other Incongruities of Shakspeare.'
these are, of course, "absurdities," "blun-
ders," "distortions of reality," "negligence,”
"absurd violations of historical accuracy."
Some concessions are, however, made by the
critic" His bestowing the epithet of gipsy
on Cleopatra is whimsical; but may, per-
haps, admit of defence." It is perfectly
clear that a man who talks thus has not the
slightest philosophical comprehension of the

objects of Art, and the mode in which Art | Art changes the very nature of those eleworks. The domain of the literal and the ideal is held to be one and the same. It is truly said of the formative arts, by a living painter who knows the philosophy of his own art as much as he excels in its practice, that "a servile attention to the letter of description, as opposed to its translateable spirit, accuracy of historic details, exactness of costume, &c., are not essential in themselves, but are valuable only in proportion as they assist the demands of the art, or produce an effect on the imagination. This may sufficiently explain why an inattention to these points, on the part of great painters (and poets, as compared with mere historians), has interfered so little with their reputation."

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One of the critics upon Shakspere has sought to apologize for his anachronisms or "absurdities" by showing the example of the greatest of painters, that of Raffaelle, in the Transfiguration :'-"The two Dominicans on their knees are as shocking a violation of good sense, and of the unities of place, of time, and of action, as it is possible to imagine." It is clear that Martin | Sherlock, who writes thus, did not understand the art of Raffaelle. This was the spirit of all criticism upon painting and upon poetry. The critic never laboured to conceive the great prevailing idea of "the maker" in either art. He had no central point from which to regard his work. The great painters, especially in their treatment of religious compositions, had their whole soul permeated with the glory and beauty of the subjects upon which they treated. Their art was in itself a worship of the Great Infinite Idea of beauty and truth. The individual forms of humanity, the temporary fashions of human things, were lifted into the region of the universal and the permanent. The Dominicans on their knees in the Transfiguration' were thus the representatives of adoring mortality during the unfolding to the bodily sense of heavenly glory. Who can see the anachronism, as it is called, till a small critic points it out?

Preface to Kugler's History of Painting,' by C. L. Eastlake, Esq., R. A.

ments by which the imagination is affected.
She touches them, and the things are pro-
pertied for her use.
What is mean, sepa-
rately considered, is harmonised by her into
greatness; what is rude, into beauty; what
is low, into sublimity. We fear that it was
a want of comprehending the high powers
and privileges of Art, whether in poetry or
painting, that made the 'Shakspere Gallery,'
which, towards the end of the last century,
was to raise up an historic school of painting
amongst us, a lamentable failure. The art
of painting in England was to do homage
to Shakspere. The commercial boldness of
a tradesman built a gallery in which the
Reynoldses, and Wests, and Romneys, and
Fuselis, and Northcotes, and Opies, might
consecrate, by the highest efforts of painting,
the inspiration which was to be borrowed
from Shakspere. The gallery was opened;
the works were munificently paid for; they
were engraved; the text of Shakspere was
printed in larger type than the world had ever
seen, to be a fit vehicle for the engravings.
People exclaimed that Italy was outdone.
With half a dozen exceptions, who can now
look upon those works and not feel that
the inspiration of Shakspere was altogether
wanting? It is not that they violate the pro
prieties of costume, which are now better un-
derstood; it is not that we are often shocked
by the translation of a poetical image into
a palpable thing-like the grinning fiend in
Reynolds's 'Death of Beaufort;' but it is
that the Shaksperean inspiration is not there.
Lord Thurlow is reported to have said, in
his coarse way, to one not wanting in talent,
"Romney, before you paint Shakspere, do,
for God's sake, read him." But the proper
reading of Shakspere was not the fragmentary
reading which Thurlow probably had in his
mind. The picturesque passages are to be
easily discovered by a painter's eye; but
these are the things which most painters
will literally translate. Shakspere is always
injured by such a literal translation. Deeply
meditated upon, his scenes and characters
float before the mind's eye in forms which
no artifices of theatrical illusion, no embodi-
ments of painting and sculpture, have ever

presented. If such visions are to be fixed by the pencil, so as to elevate our delight and add to our reverence of the great original, that result must be attained by such a profound study of the master, as a whole, as may place him in the light of the greatest of suggestive poets, instead of one whose details are to be enfeebled by a literal transcript.

We have little of importance left to notice before we reach the close of the eighteenth century, about which period we ought to rest. Opinions upon our contemporaries, except very general ones, would be as imprudent as misplaced. Perhaps we should notice in a few words the extraordinary forgeries of WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND. We consider them as the result of the all-engrossing character of Shaksperean opinion in the days of the rivalries and controversies of Steevens and Malone, of Ritson and Chalmers:"Take Markham's Armoury, John Taylor's Sculler,

Or Sir Giles Goosecap, or proverbial Fuller;
With Upton, Fabell, Dodypoll the nice,
Or Gibbe our cat, White Devils, or Old Vice;
Then lead your readers many a precious
dance,

Capering with Banks's Bay Horse in a
Trance:'

TheHousewife's Jewel' read with care ex-
act,

Wit from old Books of Cookery extract; Thoughts to stew'd prunes and kissing comfits suit,

Or the potato, vigour-stirring root;

And then, returning from that antique waste,
Be hail'd by Parr the Guide of Public
Taste."*

A clever boy, who had a foolish father whose admiration of Shakspere took the form of longing, with an intensity which Mrs. Pickle could not have equalled, for the smallest scraps of Shakspere's writing, thought he would try his hand at the manufacture of a few such scraps-a receipt; a mortgage-deed; a Protestant Confession of Faith by William Shakspere, to be placed in opposition to another forgery of a Roman Catholic Confession of Faith. This precious

*Pursuits of Literature.'

production thus concludes :-"O cheryshe usse like the sweete Chickenne thatte under the covert offe herre spreadynge Winges Receyves herre lyttle Broode ande hoverynge overre themme keepes themme harmlesse ande in safetye." Learned men came to read the confession of faith, and one affirmed that it was finer than anything in the Church Liturgy. Witty conundrums succeeded; letters to Anne Hathaway; memorandums connected with the theatre; a new edition of 'King Lear,' with the author's last alterations; and, to crown the whole, an original play, Vortigern and Rowena.' The boy was evidently imbued with the taste of his time, and really fancied that he could mend Shakspere. Hear one of his confessions:-"In King Lear the following lines are spoken by Kent after the King's death:

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'I have a journey, sir, shortly to go:

My master calls, and I must not say no.' As I did not conceive such a jingling and unmeaning couplet very appropriate to the occasion, I composed the following lines:"Thanks, sir; but I go to that unknown land That chains each pilgrim fast within its soil; By living men most shunn'd, most dreaded. Still my good master this same journey took: He calls me; I am content, and straight obey:

Then, farewell, world! the busy scene is done:

Kent liv'd most true, Kent dies most like a man.'"

The documents were published in the most expensive form. All the critics in the land came to look upon the originals. Some went upon their knees and kissed them. The "black-letter dogs" began to tear each other in pieces about their authenticity. Hard names were given and returned; dunce and blockhead were the gentlest vituperations. The whole controversy turned upon the colour of the ink, the water-mark of the paper, the precise mode of superscription to a letter, the contemporary use of a common word, the date of the first use of promissory notes, the form of a mortgage. Scarcely one of the learned went boldly to the root of the imposture, and showed that Shakspere could

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