A second messenger, that came away long | any play fraught, like this of Othello, with after, but had a speedier passage: his ac- improbabilities." count is distinct, and all their loss credited. So, in fine, one of the chorus concludes with that of Euripides, Thus you see the gods bring things to pass often otherwise than was by man proposed." After this, can we wonder that the art of Thomas Rymer is opposed to the art of William Shakspere? Let us hear what he says of Othello" of all the tragedies acted on our English stage, that which is said to bear the bell away." He first gives the fable, of which the points are, the marriage of Othello, the jealousy from the incident of the handkerchief, and the murder of Desdemona. The facetious critic then proceeds:― "Whatever rubs or difficulty may stick on the bark, the moral, sure, of this fable is very instructive. "First, This may be a caution to all maidens of quality how, without their parents' consent, they run away with blackamoors. 66 We next are told, that "the characters of manners, which are the second part in a tragedy, are not less unnatural and improper than the fable was improbable and absurd." From such characters we are not to expect thoughts "that are either true, or fine, or noble;” and further, "in the neighing of a horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespear." The crowning glory of the treatise is the mode in which the critic disposes of the scene between Othello and Iago in the third act: "Then comes the wonderful scene where Iago, by shrugs, half-words, and ambiguous reflections, works Othello up to be jealous. One might think, after what we have seen, that there needs no great cunning, no great poetry and address, to make the Moor jealous. Such impatience, such a rout for a handsome young fellow, the very morning after her marriage, must make him either to be jealous, or to take her for a changeling below his jealousy. After this scene it might strain the poet's skill to reconcile the couple, Thirdly, This may be a lesson to husbands, that, before their jealousy be tragical, the proofs may be mathematical." The whole story of Othello, we learn, is and allay the jealousy. Iago now can only founded upon "an improbable lie:” "The character of that state (Venice) is to employ strangers in their wars; but shall a poet thence fancy that they will set a negro to be their general, or trust a Moor to defend them against the Turk? With us, a blackamoor might rise to be a trumpeter; but Shakespear would not have him less than a lieutenant-general. With us, a Moor might marry some little drab, or small-coal wench: Shakespear would provide him the daughter and heir of some great lord or privy-councillor; and all the town should reckon it a very suitable match: yet the English are not bred up with that hatred and aversion to the Moors as are the Venetians, who suffer by a perpetual hostility from them, actum agere, and vex the audience with a nauseous repetition. Whence comes it, then, that this is the top scene-the scene that raises Othello above all other tragedies in our theatres? It is purely from the action, from the mops and the mows, the grimace, the grins and gesticulation. Such scenes as this have made all the world run after Harlequin and Scaramuccio." The conclusion of this prodigious piece of criticism must conclude our extracts from Thomas Rymer: "What can remain with the audience to carry home with them from this sort of poetry, for their use and edification? How can it work unless (instead of settling the mind, and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite, and fill our head with vanity, confusion, tintamarre, and jingle jangle beyond what all the parish-clerks of | two virtuous men, raised to the extremity of London, with their Old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the Second's time, could ever pretend to? Our only hopes, for the good of their souls, can be, that these people go to the playhouse as they do to church, to sit still, look on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon. There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of comical wit, some show, and some mimicry to divert the spectators: but the tragical part is plainly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savour." We cannot agree with the author of an able article in 'The Retrospective Review,' that "these attacks on Shakespear are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame;" that "their whole tone shows that the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange ;" that "he speaks as one with authority to decide." So far from receiving Rymer's frenzied denunciations as an expression of public opinion, we regard them as the idiosyncrasies of a very singular individual, who is furious in the exact proportion that the public opinion differs from his own. He attacks 'Othello' and 'Julius Cæsar,' especially, because Betterton had for years been drawing crowds to his performance in those tragedies. He is one of those who glory in opposing the general opinion. In his first book, he says, "With the remaining | tragedies I shall also send you some reflections on that 'Paradise Lost' of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem." Dryden, the great critical authority of his day, before whose opinions all other men bowed, had in 1679 thus spoken of the origin of his great scene between Troilus and Hector: "The occasion of raising it was hinted to me by Mr. Betterton; the contrivance and working of it was my own. They who think to do me an injury by saying that it is an imitation of the scene betwixt Brutus and Cassius, do me an honour by supposing I could imitate the incomparable Shakespear." Dryden then goes on to contrast the modes in which Euripides, Fletcher, and Shakspere have managed the quarrel of passion, and ending in the renewal of their friendship; and he says, “The particular groundwork which Shakespear has taken is incomparably the best." This decision of Dryden would in those days dispose of the matter as a question of criticism. But out comes Rymer, who, in opposition to Dryden's judgment, and Betterton's applause, tells us, that Brutus and Cassius here act the part of mimics; are bullies and buffoons; are to | exhibit “a trial of skill in huffing and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors for a twopenny reckoning." It may be true that "the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical and strange;" for it is the commonest of self-delusions, even to the delusions of insanity, to believe that the whole world agrees with the most extravagant mistakes and the strangest paradoxes; and when Rymer, upon his critical throne, "speaks as one with authority to decide," his authority is as powerless as that of the madmar in Hogarth, who sits in solitary nakedness upon his straw, with crown on head and sceptre in hand. Rymer is a remarkable example of an able man, in his own province, meddling with that of which he has not the slightest true conception. He is, perhaps, more denuded of the poetical sense than any man who ever attempted to be a critic in poetry: but he had real learning. Shakspere fell into worse hands after Rymer. The "Man Mountain " was fastened to the earth by the Lilliputians, and the strings are only just now broken by which he was bound. In the quotations which we have given from Dryden, it may be seen how reverently criticism was based upon certain laws which, however false might be their application, were nevertheless held to be tests of the merit of the highest poetical productions. Dryden was always balancing between the rigid application of these laws, and his own hearty admiration of those whose art had rejected them. If he had been less of a real poet himself, he might have become as furious a stickler for the canons of the ancients as Rymer was. With all his occasional expressions of hatred towards the French school of tragedy, he was unconsciously walking in the circle which the fashion of his age had drawn around all poetical invention. It was assuredly not yet the fashion of the people; for they clung to the school of poetry and passion with a love which no critical opinions could wholly subdue. It was not the fashion of those who had drunk their inspiration from the Elizabethan poets. It was not the fashion of Milton and his disciples. Hear how Edward Phillips speaks of Corneille in 1675 :-" Corneille, the great dramatic writer of France, wonderfully applauded by the present age, both among his own countrymen and our Frenchly-affected English, for the amorous intrigues which, if not there before, he commonly thrusts into his tragedies and acted histories; the imitation whereof among us, and of the perpetual colloquy in rhyme, hath of late very much corrupted our English stage." It was the spread of this fashion amongst the courtly littérateurs of the day that gave some encouragement to the extravagance of Rymer. The solemn harangues about decorum in tragedy, the unities, moral fitness, did not always present the ludicrous side, as it did in this learned madman, who sublimated the whole affair into the most delicious absurdity. We love him for it. His application of a "rule" to Fletcher's 'Maid's Tragedy' is altogether such a beautiful exemplification of his mode of applying his critical knowledge, that we cannot forbear one more quotation from him:-"If I mistake not, in poetry, no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill the master, nor a private man, much less a subject, to kill a king; nor on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other by such persons whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." Rymer never changes his opinions. The principles upon which he founded his first book were carried to a greater height of extravagance in his second. Dryden, on the contrary, depreciates Shakspere, though timidly and doubtfully, in his early criticisms, but warms into higher and higher admiration as he grows older. The 'Defence of the Epilogue to the Conquest of Grenada,' | written in 1672, presents a curious contrast "Shakespeare, thy gift I place before my sight: " The age laid its leaden sceptre upon the smaller minds, and especially upon those who a cold and approached Shakspere with creeping admiration. Of such was CHARLES GILDON. In 1694 he appeared in the world with Some Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy, and an Attempt at a Vindication of Shakespear.' It would be a waste of time to produce the antagonist of Rymer armed cap-à-pie, and set these two doughty combatants in mortal fight with their sacks of sand. It will be sufficient for us to quote a few passages from Gildon's 'Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage,' 1710, by way of showing, what indeed may be inferred from Rymer's own book, that the people were against the critics :-""Tis my opinion that, if Shakespear had had those advantages of learning which the perfect him, so great a genius as his would have knowledge of the ancients would have given * Epistle to Kneller. made him a very dangerous rival in fame to | the greatest poets of antiquity; so far am I from seeing how this knowledge could either have curbed, confined, or spoiled the natural excellence of his writings. For, though I must always think our author a miracle for the age he lived in, yet I am obliged, in justice to reason and art, to confess that he does not come up to the ancients in all the beauties of the drama. But it is no small honour to him, that he has surpassed them in the topics or commonplaces. And to confirm the victory he obtained on that head at Mr. | Hales's chamber, at Eton, I shall, in this present undertaking, not only transcribe the most shining, but refer the reader to the same subjects in the Latin authors. This I do that I might omit nothing that could do his memory that justice which he really deserves; but to put his errors and his excellences on the same bottom is to injure the latter, and give the enemies of our poet an advantage against him, of doing the same; that is, of rejecting his beauties, as all of a piece with his faults. This unaccountable bigotry of the town to the very errors of Shakespear was the occasion of Mr. Rymer's criticisms, and drove him as far into the contrary extreme. I am far from approving his manner of treating our poet; though Mr. Dryden owns, that all, or most, of the faults he has found are just; but adds this odd reflection: And yet, says he, who minds the critic, and who admires Shakespear less? That was as much as to say, Mr. Rymer has indeed made good his charge, and yet the town admired his errors still: which I take to be a greater proof of the folly and abandoned taste of the town than of any imperfections in the critic; which in my opinion, exposed the ignorance of the age he lived in; to which Mr. Rowe very justly ascribes most of his faults. It must be owned that Mr. Rymer carried the matter too far, since no man that has the least relish of poetry can question his genius; for, in spite of his known and visible errors, when I read Shakespear, even in some of his most irregular plays, I am surprised into a pleasure so great, that my judgment is no longer free to see the faults, though they are never so gross and evident. There is such a witchery in him that all the rules of art which he does not observe, though built on an equally solid and infallible reason, vanish away in the transports of those that he does observe, so entirely as if I had never known anything of the matter." The rules of art! It was the extraordinary folly of the age which produced these observations to believe that Shakspere realized his great endeavours without any rule at all, that is, without any method. Rymer was such a thorough believer in the infallibility of these rules of art, that he shut his eyes to the very highest power of Shakspere, because it did not agree with these rules. Gildon believed in the power, and believed in the rules at the same time: hence his contradictions. "The unaccountable bigotry of the town to the very errors of Shakespear" was the best proof of the triumphant privilege of genius to abide in full power and tranquillity amidst its own rules. The small poets, and the smaller critics, were working upon mechanic rules. When they saw in Shakspere something like an adherence to ancient rules of art, they cried out, Wonderful power of nature! When they detected a deviation, they exclaimed, Pitiable calamity of ignorance! It is evident that these critics could not subject the people to their laws; and they despise the ignorant people, therefore, as they pity the ignorant Shakspere. Hear Gildon again :—“ A judicious reader of our author will easily discover those defects that his beauties would make him wish had been corrected by a knowledge of the whole art of the drama. For it is evident that, by the force of his own judgment, or the strength of his imagination, he has followed the rules of art in all those particulars in which he pleases. I know that the rules of art have been sufficiently clamoured against by an ignorant and thoughtless sort of men of our age; but it was because they knew nothing of them, and never considered that without some standard of excellence there could be no justice done to merit, to which poetasters and poets must else have an equal claim, which is the highest degree of barbarism. Nay, without an appeal to these very rules, Shakespear himself is not to be distinguished from the most worthless pretenders, who have often met with an undeserved applause, and challenge the title of great poets from their success." We will only anticipate for a moment the philosophical wisdom of a later school of criticism, to supply an answer to Gildon : "The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end and means?" * The redoubted John DENNIS was another of the antagonists of Rymer. He carried heavier metal than Gildon; but he nevertheless belonged to the cuckoo school of "rules of art." He had a just appreciation of Shakspere as far as he went; and a few of his judgments certainly here deserve a place:-"Shakespear was one of the greatest geniuses that the world ever saw for the tragic stage. Though he lay under greater disadvantages than any of his successors, yet had he greater and more genuine beauties than the best and greatest of them. And what makes the brightest glory of his character, those beauties were entirely his own, and owing to the force of his own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his education, and to the age that he lived in. One may say of him as they did of Homer—that he had none to imitate, and is himself inimitable. His imaginations were often as just as they were bold and strong. He had a natural discretion which never could have been taught him, and his judgment was strong and penetrating. He seems to have wanted nothing but time and leisure for thought, to have found out those rules of which he appears so ignorant. His characters are always drawn justly, exactly, graphically, except where he failed by not knowing history or the poetical art. He has for the most part more fairly distinguished them than any of his successors have done, who have falsified them, or confounded them, by * Coleridge. making love the predominant quality in all. He had so fine a talent for touching the passions, they are so lively in him, and so truly in nature, that they often touch us more without their due preparations than those of other tragic poets who have all the beauty of design and all the advantage of incidents. His master-passion was terror, which he has often moved so powerfully and so wonderfully, that we may justly conclude that, if he had had the advantage of art and learning, he would have surpassed the very best and strongest of the ancients. His paintings are often so beautiful and so lively, so graceful and so powerful, especially where he uses them in order to move terror, that there is nothing perhaps more accomplished in our English poetry. His sentiments, for the most part, in his best tragedies, are noble, generous, easy and natural, and adapted to the persons who use them. His expression is in many places good and pure after a hundred years; simple, though elevated-graceful, though bold—and easy, though strong. He seems to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony; that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trisyllable terminations. For that diversity distinguishes it from heroic harmony, and, bringing it nearer to common use, makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse in common conversation. If Shakespear had these great qualities by nature, what would he not have been if he had joined to so happy a genius learning and the poetical art !” It was this eternal gabble about rules of art, this blindness to the truth that the living power of Shakspere had its own organization,-that set the metre-mongers of that day upon the task of improving Shakspere. Dennis was himself one of the great improvers. Poetical justice was one of the rules for which they clamoured. Duncan and Banquo ought not to perish in 'Macbeth,' nor Desdemona in 'Othello,' nor Cordelia and her father in ‘Lear,' nor Brutus in 'Julius Cæsar,' nor young Hamlet in 'Hamlet.' So |