Which is as much as if he had faid, Nay, the women, as you obferve, are frail too.'-Ay, fays Ifabel, As the glaffes where they view themselves. Women!-help heav'n! men their creation mar That is, fays Dr. Johnson, ' in imitating them, in taking them for examples.' But I cannot fee how we can, with any propriety, be faid to profit by what mars our creation. rather think Isabel means to say, that man disgraces himself by profiting or taking advantage of female weakness. And this feems to agree with the context. DUKE. Vol. I. Page 312. Reason thus with life; If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep : Dr. Warburton, in order, I prefume, to lay hold of an occafion for altering the text, excepts againft this passage, as being a direct perfuafive to fuicide. The abfurdity, however, of fuppofing that the speaker intended it as fuch, is obvious, fince he is endeavouring to inftil into a condemned prisoner a refignation to his fentence. Dr. Johnfon obferves, that the meaning feems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed.' A fense which, whether true or not, he remarks, is certainly innocent. But though our editor is graciously pleased to exculpate Shakespeare in this particular, it appears to be only that he may fall upon him with the greater violence in a page or two after; where Dr.Warburton vouchfafes to pay the poet a compliment. This paffage is in the fame fpeech as the foregoing; Thy best of rest is fleep, And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofly fear'st This paffage, fays Dr, Warburton, "is evidently taken from "the the following, of Cicero: Habes fomnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin fenfus in morte nullus ❝ fit, cum in ejus fimulachro videas effe nullum fenfum. But the Epicurean infinuation is with great judgment omitted in the "imitation." On this note Dr. Johnson hath made the following remark: Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion, I cannot, without indignation, find Shakespeare saying, that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a fentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolish, and in the poet is trite and vulgar.'-Nor can I, Dr. Johnfon, without equal indignation, find you misrepresenting Shakespeare, and thence taking occafion to condemn him for what he is not culpable; lengthening out your cenfure with imputations that, being false in themselves, appear as invidious in the man, as they are contemptible in the critic. Would not one imagine, from the warmth with which Dr. Johnfon fpeaks of this paffage, that it militates against the doctrine of the immortality of the foul; infinuating that in death we clofe our eyes, and fleep for ever?-Nothing, however, can be more foreign from the plain intent of the fpeaker, and the obvious meaning of the paffage. The duke, in the affumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to perfuade Claudio to acquiesce in the fentence of death paffed on him, and to prepare himself for launching into eternity. To this end he advifes him to think altogether on death; and to excite him to do fo, he enumerates the feveral foibles of humanity, and the calamities incident to human life; evidently intending by this means to wean his affections from the world, and render him less averfe to part with it, and less apprehenfive of the pain of dying. Thou oft provokeft fleep, fays he, yet abfurdly fear to die which, with regard to the painful and perplexing vigil of life, is only to go to fleep. For that he only speaks of the mere fenfe of death, the parting of the foul from the body, and that Claudio understood him fo, is very evident, by the reply which the latter makes to his harangue; notwithstanding the very E 2 ; laft laft words of it feem to be full as exceptionable as thofe ob jected to. DUKE. CLAU. in this life Lie hid a thousand deaths; yet death we fear, I humbly thank you. To fue to live, 1 find, I feek to die; And, feeking death, find life: let it come on. If any thing further be neceffary to corroborate what is here advanced, we might inftance the duke's exhorting him, in fcene III. of the fame act, to go to his knees and prepare for death. It is highly inconfiftent to think such a piece of advice should come from one who conceived death to be a perpetual fleep. Prayers muft feem as fuperfluous to him, as the advice must appear impertinent to the prifoner. But that Claudio had the strongest notions of a future ftate after death is not to be doubted, fince, fpeaking of the fin of debauching his fifter, and Angelo's defign to commit it, he fays If it were damnable, he being fo wife, Why would he for the momentary trick Again, when his fears recurring, he tells his fifter that Death is a fearful thing, it is plain, he doth not confine the meaning of the word, as the Duke did, to the mere act or circumftance of dying. For when the retorts upon him, And shamed life a hateful, he goes on, Ay, but to die, and go we know not where. As if he had faid, I do not mean the mere pain of dying; it is what is to come after death that I fear, when we are to go we know not where; To lie in cold obftruction, and to rot; In : In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice : - Can we think that Shakespeare could fo far forget himself, as to be here so very explicit regarding the notion of a future ftate, if but two or three pages before he had been inculcating a contrary doctrine ! -What then muft we think of his commentator, who affects to be moved with indignation, and in effect prefumes to charge him on this account with vulgarity, folly and impiety! Shakespeare appears to have had fuch a regard, even for his mortal part*, as to bestow a curfe on the perfon who fhould difturb his afhes; what a fevere malediction, then, would he not have beftowed on that facrilegious hand, which hath thus mangled his immortal reputation, could he have penetrated the womb of time, or anticipated the temerity of a modern critic + ! * At least if he wrote the verfes, faid to be put on his grave-ftone : Good friend, for Jefus' fake, forbear To dig the duft inclosed here. Bleft be the man that fpares these stones, And curft be he who moves my bones. I had written the above remarks and fent them to the prefs. without recollecting that a fimilar reference to this imprecation of Shakespeare is to be met with in the appendix to the Canons of Criticism, (last edition, page 260.) I leave the public to judge, fays that fenfible critic, which has been engaged against Shakespeare, Mr. Warburton or I, who have in part at least vindicated • that beft of poets from the worst of critics; from one, who has 'been guilty of a greater violation of him, than that of the authors on which he imprecated vengeance in his epitaph. A violation which, were he not armed against the fuperftition of believing in portents and prodigies, might make him dread the apparition of that injured bard.'--Here we fee the murder comes out: Dr. Warburton, it is true, was not only armed against the fuperftition of 1 > ISAB. Vol. I. Page 318. dar'ft thou die? The fenfe of death is moft in apprehenfion; • The poor beetle, &c.] The reasoning is, that death is no • more than every being muft fuffer, though the dread of it is pepeculiar to man, or perhaps, that, we are inconfiftent with < ourselves when we fo much dread that which we carelefly inflict on other creatures, that feel the pain as acutely as we.' The reasoning appears to be no more than is actually and obviously expreffed in the text. Isabel is perfuading her brother that the sense of death is felt more in apprehenfion than in reality; for that in reality it is next kin to nothing, the poor beetle that we tread upon, and which, it is to be fuppofed, can never be fufceptible of much pain, feeling a pang as great as a giant; ergo, more than Claudio will feel,-This is the whole of this fimple argument; which ferves to corroborate what hath been faid in the preceding note; and, at the fame time to fhew that, if any one in this play feems to believe in the mortality of the foul, it is Ifabel; which, I think, it is prepofterous to imagine, when we confider that she is juft going into a nunnery, with a defign to take the veil, of believing in ghofts, by his principles as a philofopher, but also against their doing him hurt, by the awful power annexed to his facred functions and character as a priest. But this is not the cafe with Dr. Johnson, whose religion and philofophy put together, it feems, cannot fecure him against the terrors of fuch fuperftition: so that, as I before obferved, here the fecret comes out; and we fee the reason for his fitting up all night, and lying a-bed all day, for fear of apparitions. It is not fo much from his fear of ghofts in general, (for we know he did not appear to be afraid of Fanny) but of the ghost of Shakespeare, whofe fame he is conscious of having inhumanly affaffinated, and whofe violated mufe cries aloud for vengeance against him. 3 Vol. |