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more easy, "to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop," as Charles Lamb describes the tragic art of Webster; or to make a Desdemona, amidst the indignities which are heaped upon her, and the fears which subdue her soul, move tranquilly in an atmosphere of poetical beauty, thinking of the maid that

"had a song of-willow;

An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune,

And she died singing it."

It is a rude conception which Johnson has of Shakspere's art, when he says of the play of "Hamlet,' "The scenes are interchangeably di- | versified with merriment and solemnity..... The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth; the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness; and every personage produces the effect intended." True. But it was no intended effect of the madness of Hamlet to cause "much mirth." Every word that Hamlet utters has something in it which sounds the depths of our intellectual being, because every word is consistent with his own character, which, of all poetical creations, sends us most to search into the mysteries of our own individual natures. This, if we understand it aright, is poetry. But Johnson says, "Voltaire expresses his wonder that our author's extravagances are endured by a nation which has seen the tragedy of 'Cato.' Let him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakspeare of men. We find in 'Cato' innumerable beauties which enamour us of its author, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning; but 'Othello' is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation, impregnated with genius." If Addison speaks "the language of poets," properly so called, 'Cato' is poetry. If Shakspere speaks the language of men, as distinct from the language of poets, 'Othello' is not poetry. It needs no further argument to show that the critic has a false theory of

the poetical art. He has here narrowed the question to an absurdity.

We may observe, from what Johnson says of "the minute and slender criticism of VOLTAIRE," that the English critics fancied that, doing Shakspere ample justice themselves, they were called upon to defend him from the mistaken criticisms of a foreign school. Every Englishman, from the period of Johnson, who has fancied himself absolved from the guilt of not admiring and understanding Shakspere has taken up a stone to cast at Voltaire. Those who speak of Voltaire as an ignorant and tasteless calumniator of Shakspere forget that his hostility was based upon a system of art which he conceived, and rightly so, was opposed to the system of Shakspere. He had been bred up in the school of Corneille and Racine, the glories of his countrymen; and it is really a remarkable proof of the vigour of his mind that he tolerated so much as he did in Shakspere, and admired so much; in this respect going farther perhaps than many of our own countrymen of no mean reputation, such as Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke in 1730. In his 'Discourse on Tragedy,' prefixed to 'Brutus,' and addressed to Bolingbroke in that year, he says, "Not being able, my lord, to risk upon the French stage verses without rhyme, such as are the usage of Italy and of England, I have at least desired to transport to our scene certain beauties of yours. It is true, and I avow it, that the English theatre is very faulty. I have heard from your mouth that you have not a good tragedy. But in compensation you have some admirable scenes in these very monstrous pieces. Until the present time almost all the tragic authors of your nation have wanted that purity, that regular conduct, those bienséances of action and style, that elegance, and all those refinements of art, which have established the reputation of the French theatre since the great Corneille. But the most irregular of your pieces have one grand merit-it is that of action." In the same letter we have his opinion of Shakspere, which is certainly not that of a cold critic, but of one who admired even where he could not approve, and blamed as we had been accustomed to

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blame:" With what pleasure have I seen in London your tragedy of Julius Cæsar,' which for a hundred and fifty years has been the delight of your nation! I assuredly do not pretend to approve the barbarous irregularities with which it abounds. It is only astonishing that one finds not more of them in a work composed in an age of ignorance, by a man who even knew not Latin, and who had no master but his own genius. But, in the midst of so many gross faults, with what ravishment have I seen Brutus," &c. All this is perfectly intelligible, and demands no harsher censure than we have a right to apply to Dryden, who says nearly as strong things, and writes most of his own tragedies in the spirit of a devoted worshipper of the French school. In 1761, some thirty years after his letter to Bolingbroke, Voltaire writes. 'An Essay on the English Theatre,' in which he expresses the wonder, which Johnson notices, that the nation which has 'Cato' can endure Shakspere. In this essay he has a long analysis of 'Hamlet,' in which, without attempting to penetrate at all into the real idea of that drama, he gives such an account of the plot as may exaggerate what ne regards as its absurdities. He then says, "We cannot have a more forcible example of the difference of taste among nations. Let us, after this, speak of the rules of Aristotle, and the three unities, and the bienséances, and the necessity of never leaving the scene empty, and that no person should go out or come in without a sensible reason. Let us talk, after this, of the artful arrangement of the plot and its natural development; of the expressions being simple and noble; of making princes speak with the decency which they always have, or ought to have; of never violating the rules of language. It is clear that a whole nation may be enchanted without giving oneself such trouble." No one can be more consistent than Voltaire in the expression of his opinions. It is not the individual judgment of the man betraying him into a doubtful and varying tone, but his uniform theory of the poetical art, which directs all his censure of Shakspere; and which therefore makes his admiration, such

as it is, of more value than the vague homage of those who, despising, or affecting to despise, Voltaire's system, have embraced no system of their own, and thus infallibly come to be more dogmatical, more supercilious, in their abuse, and more creeping in their praise, than the most slavish disciple of a school wholly opposed to Shakspere, but consecrated by time, by high example, and by national opinion. The worst things which Voltaire has said of Shakspere are conceived in this spirit, and therefore ought not in truth to offend Shakspere's warmest admirers. “He had a genius full of power and fruitfulness, of the natural and the sublime "-this is the praise. The dispraise is linked to it:— "Without the least spark of good taste, and without the slightest knowledge of rules." We may dissent from this, but it is not fair to quarrel with it. He then goes on:"I will say a hazardous thing, but true, that the merit of this author has ruined the English theatre. There are so many fine scenes, so many grand and terrible passages spread through his monstrous farces which they call tragedies, that his pieces have always been represented with extreme suc

cess.

We smile at the man's power of ridicule when he travesties a plot of Shakspere, as in the dissertation prefixed to 'Semiramis.' But his object is so manifest that of the elevation of his own theory of art-that he cannot outrage us. For what is his conclusion? That Shakspere would have been a perfect poet if he had lived in the time of Addison †.

The famous 'Letter to the Academy,' in 1776, was the crowning effort of Voltaire's hostility to Shakspere. In that year was announced a complete translation of Shakspere; and several of the plays were published as a commencement of the undertaking. France, according to Grimm, was in a ferment. The announcement of this translation appears to have enraged Voltaire. It said that Shakspere was the creator of the sublime art of the theatre, which received from his hands existence and perfection;

*Lettres Philosophiques.' Lettre 13. Dictionnaire Philosophique.' 'Correspondance,' 3me partie, tome Ire.

and, what was personally offensive, it added | Take a specimen:-"Our author, by followthat Shakspere was unknown in France, or, ing minutely the chronicles of the times, rather, disfigured. Voltaire tells the Academy has embarrassed his dramas with too great that he was the first who made Shakspere a number of persons and events. The hurlyknown in France, by the translation of some burly of these plays recommended them to of his passages; that he had translated, too, a rude, illiterate audience, who, as he says, the 'Julius Caesar.' But he is indignant that loved a noise of targets. His poverty, and the new translators would sacrifice France to the low condition of the stage (which at that England, in paying no homage to the great time was not frequented by persons of rank), French dramatists, whose pieces are acted obliged him to this complaisance; and, unthroughout Europe. He notices, then, the fortunately, he had not been tutored by any four plays which they have translated, and rules of art, or informed by acquaintance calls upon them, of course in his tone of ex- with just and regular dramas."* She gives aggeration and ridicule, to render faithfully a speech of Lear, and says, "Thus it is certain passages which they have slurred that Shakspeare redeems the nonsense, the over. But Voltaire avows the support which indecorums, the irregularities of his plays." he receives from the English themselves in Again, in her criticism on Macbeth :'—“Our his condemnation of what he holds to be author is too much addicted to the obscure the absurdities of Shakspere, quoting from bombast much affected by all sorts of writers Marmontel in this matter:-"The English in that age. . . . There are many bombast have learned to correct and abridge Shak- speeches in the tragedy of Macbeth,' and spere. Garrick has banished from his scene the these are the lawful prize of the critic." Grave-diggers in Hamlet,' and has omitted The exhibition of the fickle humour of the nearly all the fifth act." Voltaire then adds, mob in Julius Cæsar' is not to be "entirely "The translator agrees not with this truth; condemned." "The quarrel between Brutus he takes the part of the gravediggers; he and Cassius does not, by any means, deserve would preserve them as a respectable monu- the ridicule thrown upon it by the French ment of an unique genius." The critic then critic: . . . . . . but it rather retards than gives a scene of 'Bajazet,' contrasting it brings forward the catastrophe, and is usewith the opening scene of 'Romeo and Juliet.' ful only in setting Brutus in a good light.” "It is for you," he says to the Academicians, One more extract from Mrs. Montagu, and "to decide which method we ought to follow we have done:-"It has been demonstrated -that of Shakspere, the god of tragedy, or with great ingenuity and candour that he of Racine." In a similar way he contrasts was destitute of learning: the age was rude a passage in Corneille and Lear:-"Let the and void of taste; but what had a still more Academicians judge if the nation which has pernicious influence on his works was, that produced 'Iphigénie' and 'Athalie' ought to the court and the universities, the statesabandon them, to behold men and women men and scholars, affected a scientific jargon. strangled upon the stage, street-porters, An obscurity of expression was thought the sorcerers, buffoons, and drunken priests-if veil of wisdom and knowledge; and that our court, so long renowned for its politeness mist, common to the morn and eve of and its taste, ought to be changed into an literature, which in fact proves it is not at alehouse and a wine-shop." In this letter to its high meridian, was affectedly thrown over the Academy Voltaire loses his temper and the writings, and even the conversation of his candour. He is afraid to risk any ad- the learned, who often preferred images dismiration of Shakspere. But this intolerance torted or magnified, to a simple exposition is more intelligible than the apologies of of their thoughts. Shakspeare is never more Shakspere's defenders in England. We must worthy of the true critic's censure than in confess that we have more sympathy with those instances in which he complies with Voltaire's earnest attack upon Shakspere this false pomp of manner. It was parthan with Mrs. MONTAGU's maudlin defence.

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Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakspeare."

donable in a man of his rank not to be more polite and delicate than his contemporaries; but we cannot so easily excuse such superiority of talents for stooping to any affectation." This half-patronising, halfvindicating tone is very well meant; and we respect Mrs. Montagu for coming forward to break a lance with the great European critic; but the very celebrity of Shakspere's "fair warrior" is one of the proofs that there was no real school of criticism amongst us.

Apologies for Shakspere, lamentations over his defects, explanations of the causes of them, — rude age, unlettered audience, the poet himself working without knowledge, all this, the invariable language of the English critics, is eagerly laid hold of, not only to justify the hostility of Voltaire, but to perpetuate the reign of a system altogether opposed to the system of Shakspere, up to the present hour. M. Villemain, in the new edition of his " Essay upon Shakspeare,' published in 1839, gives us as much interjectional eulogy of our national poet as might satisfy the most eager appetite of those admirers who think such praise worth anything. The French critic, of nearly a century later than Voltaire, holds that Shakspere has no other system than his genius. It is in this chaos that we must seek his splendour. His absurdities, his buffooneries, belong to the gross theatre of his period. In judging Shakspere we must reject the mass of barbarism and false taste with which he is surcharged. But then, apart from any system, "quelle passion! quelle poésie! quelle éloquence ! " "This rude and barbarous genius discovers an unknown delicacy in the development of his female characters." And why? "The taste which is so often missing in him is here supplied by a delicate instinct, which makes him even anticipate what was wanting to the civilization of his time." The critic reposes somewhat on English authority: -“Mrs. Montagu has repelled the contempt of Voltaire by a judicious criticism of some defects of the French theatre, but she cannot palliate the enormous extravagancies of the pieces of Shakspere. Let us not forget, she says, that these pieces were played in a miserable inn before an unlettered audience,

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scarcely emerging out of barbarism.”* Mrs. Montagu is not alone in this. Others, as angry with Voltaire as prodigal of their admiration of Shakspere, quietly surrender what Voltaire really attacks, forgetting that his praises have been nearly as strong, and sometimes a little more judicious than their own. Hear MARTIN SHERLOCK apostrophizing Shakspere :

"Always therefore study Nature.

"It is she who was thy book, O Shakspeare; it is she who was thy study day and night; it is she from whom thou hast drawn those beauties which are at once the glory and delight of thy nation. Thou wert the eldest son, the darling child, of nature; and like thy mother, enchanting, astonishing, sublime, graceful, thy variety is inexhaustible. Always original, always new, thou art the only prodigy which nature has produced. Homer was the first of men, but thou art more than man. The reader who thinks this eulogium extravagant is a stranger to my subject. To say that Shakspeare had the imagination of Dante, and the depth of Machiavel, would be a weak encomium: he had them and more. To say that he possessed the terrible graces of Michael Angelo, and the amiable graces of Correggio, would be a weak encomium: he had them, and more. To the brilliancy of Voltaire he added the strength of Demosthenes; and to the simplicity of La Fontaine the majesty of Virgil.-But, say you, we have never seen such a being.' You are in the right; Nature made it, and broke the mould."

This is the first page of 'A Fragment on Shakspeare' (1786). The following is an extract from the last page:-"The only view of Shakspeare was to make his fortune, and for that it was necessary to fill the playhouse. At the same time that he caused a duchess to enter the boxes, he would cause her servants to enter the pit. The people have always money; to make them spend it, they must be diverted; and Shakspeare forced his sublime genius to stoop to the gross taste of the populace, as Sylla jested

with his soldiers."

* Essai sur Shakspeare, Paris, 1839.

DAVID HUME, the most popular historian of England, thus writes of Shakspere:"Born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books." The consequence of this national and individual ignorance was a necessary one :-" A reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold." What right have we to abuse Voltaire, when we hear this from an English writer of the same period? We fully agree with Schlegel in this matter: "That foreigners, and Frenchmen in particular, who frequently speak in the most strange language of antiquity and the middle ages, as if cannibalism had been first put an end to in Europe by Louis XIV., should entertain this opinion of Shakspere, might be pardonable; but that Englishmen should adopt such a calumniation of that glorious epoch of their history, in which the foundation of their greatness was laid, is to me incomprehensible."* But it is not wholly incomprehensible. Schlegel has in part explained it-"I have elsewhere examined into the pretensions of modern cultivation, as it is called, which looks down with such contempt on all preceding ages. I have shown that it is all little, superficial, and unsubstantial at bottom. The pride of what has been called the present maturity of human reason has come to a miserable end; and the structures erected by those pedagogues of the human race have fallen to pieces like the babyhouses of children." So far, of the critical contempt of the age of Shakspere. Schlegel again, with equal truth, lays bare the real character of the same critical opinions of the poet himself:-"It was, generally speaking, the prevailing tendency of the time which preceded our own, a tendency displayed also in physical science, to consider what is possessed of life as a mere accumulation of dead parts; to separate what exists only in connection and cannot otherwise be conceived, instead of penetrating to the central

* Lectures on Dramatic Literature,' Black's translation.

point, and viewing all the parts as so many irradiations from it. Hence, nothing is so rare as a critic who can elevate himself to the contemplation of an extensive work of art. Shakspere's compositions, from the very depth of purpose displayed in them, have been exposed to the misfortune of being misunderstood. Besides, this prosaical species of criticism applies always the poetical form to the details of execution; but, in so far as the plan of the piece is concerned, it never looks for more than the logical connection of causes and effects, or some partial and trivial moral by way of application; and all that cannot be reconciled to this is declared a superfluous, or even a detrimental, addition. On these principles we must equally strike out most of the choral songs of the Greek tragedies, which also contribute nothing to the development of the action, but are merely an harmonious echo of the impression aimed at by the poet. In this they altogether mistake the rights of poetry and the nature of the romantic drama, which, for the very reason that it is and ought to be picturesque, requires richer accompaniments and contrasts for its main groups. In all art and poetry, but more especially in the romantic, the fancy lays claim to be considered as an independent mental power governed according to its own laws."

The translation of Schlegel's work in 1815, in conjunction with the admirable lectures of Coleridge, gave a new direction amongst the thinking few to our national opinion of Shakspere. Other critics of a higher school than our own race of commentators had preceded Schlegel in Germany; and it would be perhaps not too much to say that, as the reverent study of Shakspere has principally formed their æsthetic school, so that æsthetic school has sent us back to the reverent study of Shakspere. He lived in the hearts of the people, who knew nothing of the English critics. The learned, as they were called, understood him least. Let the lovers of truth rejoice that their despotism is over.

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