among the multitude, we will descend to particulars, and analyze this famous soliloquy. all nature, and pours forth a redundancy of figures, an author so universally held in veneration, whose even with a lavish hand. Even the chaste Xeno- very errors have helped to sanctify his character phon, who generally illustrates his subject by way of simile, sometimes ventures to produce an expressive metaphor, such as, part of the phalanx Hamlet, having assumed the disguise of madness, fluctuated in the march; and indeed nothing can as a cloak under which he might the more effec be more significant than this word exuune, to tually revenge his father's death upon the murderer represent a body of men staggered, and on the and usurper, appears alone upon the stage in a point of giving way. Armstrong has used the pensive and melancholy attitude, and communes word fluctuate with admirable efficacy, in his phi- with himself in these words: losophical poem, entitled, The Art of Preserving Health. O! when the growling winds contend, and all The word fluctuate on this occasion not only exhibits an idea of struggling, but also echoes to the sense like the eppir di uzun of Homer; which, by the by, it is impossible to render into English, for the verb prow signifies not only to stand erect like prickles, as a grove of lances, but also to make a noise like the crashing of armour, the hissing of javelins, and the splinters of spears. To be, or not to be, that is the question:--- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; Over and above an excess of figures, a young author is apt to run into a confusion of mixed me-taphors, which leave the sense disjointed, and distract the imagination: Shakspeare himself is often guilty of these irregularities. The soliloquy in Hamlet, which we have so often heard extolled in terms of admiration, is, in our opinion, a heap of absurdities, whether we consider the situation, the sentiment, the argumentation, or the poetry. Hamlet is informed by the Ghost, that his father was murdered, and therefore he is tempted to murder himself, even after he had promised to take vengeance on the usurper, and expressed the utmost eagerness to achieve this enterprise. It does not appear that he had the least reason to wish for death; but every motive which may be supposed We have already observed, that there is not any to influence the mind of a young prince, concurred apparent circumstance in the fate or situation of to render life desirable-revenge towards the usur- Hamlet, that should prompt him to harbour one 'per; love for the fair Ophelia; and the ambition thought of self-murder: and therefore these exof reigning. Besides, when he had an opportu- pressions of despair imply an impropriety in point nity of dying without being accessary to his own of character. But supposing his condition was death; when he had nothing to do but, in obe- truly desperate, and he saw no possibility of repose dience to his uncle's command, to allow himself to but in the uncertain harbour of death, let us see in be conveyed quietly to England, where he was what manner he argues on that subject. The sure of suffering death; instead of amusing him- question is, "To be, or not to be;" to die by my self with meditations on mortality, he very wisely own hand, or live and suffer the miseries of life. consulted the means of self-preservation, turned He proceeds to explain the alternative in these the tables upon his attendants, and returned to terms, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, Denmark. But granting him to have been reduced to the lowest state of despondence, surrounded with nothing but horror and despair, sick of this life, and eager to tempt futurity, we shall see how far he argues like a philosopher. or endure the frowns of fortune, or to take arms, and by opposing, end them." Here he deviates from his first proposition, and death is no longer the question. The only doubt is, whether he will stoop to misforture, or exert his faculties in order In order to support this general charge against to surmount it. This surely is the obvious mean ing, and indeed the only meaning that can be im- question. Hamlet was deterred from suicide by a plied to these words, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer full conviction, that, in flying from one sea of troubles which he did know, he should fall into another which he did not know. His whole chain of reasoning, therefore, seems inconsistent and incongruous. "I am doubtful whether I should live, or do violence upon my own He now drops this idea, and reverts to his reason-life: for I knew not whether it is more honourable ing on death, in the course of which he owns him self deterred from suicide by the thoughts of what may follow death; -The dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns.-- This might be a good argument in a Heathen or Pagan, and such indeed Hamlet really was; but Shakspeare has already represented him as a good Catholic, who must have been acquainted with the truths of revealed religion, and says expressly in this very play, -Had not the everlasting fix'd His canon 'gainst self-murder. Moreover, he had just been conversing with his father's spirit piping hot from purgatory, which we presume is not within the bourn of this world. The dread of what may happen after death, says he, Makes us rather bear those ills we have, to bear misfortune patiently, than to exert myself sition. This i propriety This declaration at least implies some knowledge plunge myself in the afflictions of another life: of the other world, and expressly asserts, that there ergo, conscience makes cowards of us all." But must be ills in that world, though what kind of ills this conclusion would justify the logician in sayconsequens; for it is entirely dethey are, we do not know. The argument, there-ing, neg the major and minor propofore, may be reduced to this lemma: this world tached b abounds with ills which I feel; the other world abounds with ills, the nature of which I do not know; therefore, I will rather bear those ills I have, "than fly to others which I know not of: " a deduction amounting to a certainty, with respect to the only circumstance that could create a doubt, | namely, whether in death he should rest from his die," is misery; and if he was certain there were evils in more," the next world, as well as in this, he had no room What alone to reason at all about the matter. could justify his thinking on this subject, would have been the hope of flying from the ills of this world, without encountering any others in the tains an tion car in thin: "A th is not less exceptionable in the ion, than in the chain of argudie-to sleep-no more," conwhich all the art of punctua ove: for it may signify that "to more; or the expression "no sidered as an abrupt apostrophe he meant to say "no more of that he rub," is a vulgarism beneath mlet's character, and the words the sense imperfect: p of death what dreams may come, shuffled off this mortal coil, -use. ns that might come, but the fear of ight come, occasioned the pause or espect in the same line may be alor consideration: but r's wrong, the proud man's contumely according to the invariable acceptation of the words the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity wrong and contumely, can signify nothing but and justice, which is the harbour of safety; lest the wrongs sustained by the oppressor, and the the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in contumely or abuse thrown upon the proud man; the sea of that punishment thou hast deserved." though it is plain that Shakspeare used them in a But if these laboured conceits are ridiculous in different sense: neither is the word spurn a sub-poetry, they are still more inexcusable in prose: stantive, yet as such he has inserted it in these lines: The insolence of office, and the spurns If we consider the metaphors of the soliloquy, we shall find them jumbled together in a strange confusion. such as we find them frequently occur in Strada's Bellum Belgicum. Vix descenderat à prætorià navi Cæsar; cùm fæda ilico exorta in portu tem|pestas; classem impetu disjecit, prætoriam hausit; quasi non recturam amplius Cæsarem Cæsarisque fortunam. "Cæsar had scarcely set his feet on shore, when a terrible tempest arising, shatterIf the metaphors were reduced to painting, we ed the fleet even in the harbour, and sent to the should find it a very difficult task, if not altogether bottom the prætorian ship, as if he resolved it impracticable, to represent with any propriety out- should no longer carry Cæsar and his fortunes." rageous fortune using her slings and arrows, be- Yet this is modest in comparison of the followtween which indeed there is no sort of analogy in ing flowers: Alii, pulsis è tormento catenis disnature. Neither can any figure be more ridiculous-cerpti sectique, dimidiato corpore pugnabant sibi ly absurd than that of a man taking arms against superstites, ac peremtæ partis ultores. "Others, a sea, exclusive of the incongruous medley of slings, dissevered and cut in twain by chain-shot, fought arrows, and seas, justled within the compass of with one-half of their bodies that remained, in reone reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody venge of the other half that was slain." of broken images of sleeping, dreaming, and shift- Homer, Horace, and even the chaste Virgil, is ing off a coil, which last conveys no idea that can not free from conceits. The latter, speaking of a be represented on canvass. A man may be ex-man's hand cut off in battle, says, hibited shuffling off his garments or his chains: Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera quærit; Virgil, in his sixth Eclogue, says, but how he should shuffle off a coil, which is another term for noise and tumult, we cannot comprehend. Then we have "long-lived calamity," thus enduing the amputated hand with sense and and "time armed with whips and scorns;" and volition. This, to be sure, is a violent figure, and "patient merit spurned at by unworthiness;" and hath been justly condemned by some accurate cri"misery with a bare bodkin going to make his own tics; but we think they are too severe in extending quietus," which at best is but a mean metaphor. the same censure to some other passages in the These are followed by figures "sweating under most admired authors. fardels of burdens," "puzzled with doubts, "shaking with fears," and "flying from evils." Finally, | we see "resolution sicklied o'er with pale thought," a conception like that of representing health by sickness; and a "current of pith turned awry so as to lose the name of action," which is both an error in fancy, and a solecism in sense. In a word, this soliloquy may be compared to the Egri somnia, and the Tabula, cujus vane fin- And Pope has copied the conceit in his Pastorals, gentur species. But while we censure the chaos of broken, incongruous metaphors, we ought also to caution the young poet against the opposite extreme of pursuing a metaphor, until the spirit is quite exhausted in a succession of cold conceits; such as we see in the following letter, said to be sent by Tamerlane to the Turkish emperor Bajazet. "Where is the monarch that dares oppose our arms? Where is the potentate who doth not glory in being numbered among our vassals? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman mariner, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldest furl the sails of thy temerity, and cast Omnia quæ, Phœbo quondam meditante, beatus Whate'er, when Phoebus bless'd the Arcadian plain Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along, Vida thus begins his first Eclogue, Dicite, vos mus, et juvenum memorate querelas Racine adopts the same bold figure in his Phædra . Le flot qui l'apporta recule epouvanté: Even Milton has indulged himself in the same there is no impropriety in saying such a man is license of expression As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Of Araby the blest; with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league, Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles. Shakspeare says, I've seen Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam, And indeed more correct writers, both ancient true as steel, firm as a rock, inflexible as an oak, unsteady as the ocean; or in describing a disposi tion cold as ice, or fickle as the wind;-and these expressions are justified by constant practice ;-we shall hazard an assertion, that the comparison of a chaste woman to an icicle is proper and picturesque, as it obtains only in the circumstances of cold and purity: but that the addition of its being curdled from the purest snow, and hanging on the temple of Diana, the patroness of virginity, heightens the whole into a most beautiful simile, that gives a very respectable and amiable idea of the character in question. The simile is no more than an extended meta and modern, abound with the same kind of figure, phor, introduced to illustrate and beautify the subwhich is reconciled to propriety, and even invested ject; it ought to be apt, striking, properly pursued, with beauty, by the efficacy of the prosopopoeia, and adorned with all the graces of poetical melody. which personifies the object. Thus, when Virgil But a simile of this kind ought never to proceed says Enipeus heard the sons of Apollo, he raises from the mouth of a person under any great agitaup, as by enchantment, the idea of a river god tion of spirit; such as a tragic character overcrowned with sedges, his head raised above the whelmed with grief, distracted by contending cares, stream, and in his countenance the expression of pleased attention. By the same magic we see, in the couplet quoted from Pope's Pastorals, old father Thames leaning upon his urn, and listening to the poet's strain. be Thus in the regions of poetry, all nature, even the passions and affections of the mind, may personified into picturesque figures for the entertainment of the reader. Occan smiles or frowns, as the sea is calm or tempestuous; a Triton rules on every angry billow; every mountain has its Nymph; ; every stream its Naad; every tree its Hamadryad; and every art its Genius. We can not therefore assent to those who censure Thomson as licentious for using the following figure: O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills! We can not conceive a more beautiful image than that of the genius of agriculture distinguished by the implements of his art, imbrowned with labour, glowing with health, crowned with a garland of foliage, flowers, and fruit, lying stretched at his ease on the brow of a gentle swelling hill, and contemplating with pleasure the happy effects of his own industry. Neither can we join issue against Shakspeare for this comparison, which hath likewise incurred the censure of the critics: -The noble sister of Poplicola, The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle or agonizing in the pangs of death. The language of passion will not admit simile, which is always the result of study and deliberation. We will not allow a hero the privilege of a dying swan, which is said to chant its approaching fate in the most melodious strain; and therefore nothing can be more ridiculously unnatural, than the representation of a lover dying upon the stage with a laboured simile in his mouth. The orientals, whose language was extremely figurative, have been very careless in the choice of their similes; provided the resemblance obtained in one circumstance, they minded not whether they disagreed with the subject in every other respect. Many instances of this defect in congruity may be culled from the most sublime parts of Scripture. Homer has been blamed for the bad choice of his similes on some particular occasions. He compares Ajax to an ass in the Iliad, and Ulysses to a steak broiling on the coals in the Odyssey. His admirers have endeavoured to excuse him, by reminding us of the simplicity of the age in which he wrote; but they have not been able to prove that any ideas of dignity or importance were, even in those days, affixed to the character of an ass, or the quality of a beef-collop; therefore, they were very improper illustrations for any situation, in which a hero ought to be represented. Virgil has degraded the wife of king Latinus, by comparing her, when she was actuated by the Fury, to a top which the boys lash for diversion. This doubtless is a low image, though in other respects the comparison is not destitute of propriety; but he is much more justly censured for the followThis is no more than illustrating a quality of the ing simile, which has no sort of reference to the mind, by comparing it with a sensible object. If subject. Speaking of Turnus, he says, That's curdled by the frost from purest snow, And hangs on Dian's temple -Medio dux agmine Turnus But Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train, The Ganges thus by seven rich streams supplied, These no doubt are majestic images; but they bear Horace has been ridiculed by some shrewd critics for this comparison, which, however, we think is more defensible than the former. Addressing himself to Munatius Plancus, he says: Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila cœlo Sæpe Notus, neque parturit imbres The analogy, it must be confessed, is not very striking; but nevertheless it is not altogether void Here we not only find the most scrupulous propriety, and the happiest choice, in comparing the Thracian bard to Philomel the poet of the grove; but also the most beautiful description, containing a fine touch of the pathos, in which last particular indeed Virgil, in our opinion, excels all other poets, whether ancient or modern. One would imagine that nature had exhausted itself, in order to embellish the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, with similes and metaphors. The first of these very often uses the comparison of the wind, the whirlwind, the hail, the torrent, to express the rapidity of his combatants; but when he comes to describe the velocity of the immortal horses that drew the chariot of Juno, he raises his ideas to the subject, and, as Longinus observes, measures every leap by the whole breadth of the horizon. Οσσον δ' ηεροειδες ανηρ ίδεν οφθαλμοισιν For as a watchman from some rock on high The celerity of this goddess seems to be a favourite of propriety. The poet reasons thus: as the south wind, though generally attended with rain, is often known to dispel the clouds, and render the weather serene; so do you, though generally on the rack of thought, remember to relax sometimes, and drown your cares in wine. As the south wind is not al-gil, and almost every succeeding poet, howsoever ways moist, so you ought not always to be dry. A few instances of inaccuracy, or mediocrity, can never derogate from the superlative merit of Homer and Virgil, whose poems are the great magazines, replete with every species of beauty and magnifivence, particularly abounding with similes, which astonish, delight, and transport the reader. Every simile ought not only to be well adapted to the subject, but also to include every excellence of description, and to be coloured with the warmest tints of poetry. Nothing can be more happily hit off than the following in the Georgics, to which the poet compares Orpheus lamenting his lost Eurydice. Qualis populeâ morens Philomela sub umbrâ So Philomela, from th' umbrageous wood, Homer's best similes have been copied by Vir they may have varied in the manner of expression. Ώστε λέων εχάρη μεγάλων επι σωματι κύρσας Or mountain goat his bulky prize appear; The Mantuan bard, in the tenth book of the Eneid, applies the same simile to Mezentius, when he beholds Acron in the battle. Impastus stabula alta leo ceu sæpe peragrans Conspexit capream, aut surgentem in cornua cervum; Then as a hungry lion, who beholds A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds, |