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changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness-and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with Spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace and is a thousand times more full of fancy and imagery, and splendour, than those who, in pursuit of such enchantments, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed-he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world: -and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection—but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and per fumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator.

What other poet has put all the charm of a Moonlight landscape into a single line?-and that by an image so

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true to nature, and so simple, as to seem obvious to the most common observation?

See how the Moonlight SLEEPS on yonder bank!"

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Who else has expressed, in three lines, all that is picturesque and lovely in a Summer's Dawn-first setting before our eyes, with magical precision, the visible appearances of the infant light, and then, by one graceful and glorious image, pouring on our souls all the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity of returning morning? tolt -i-krithe bus -t-il tou

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See, love what envious streaksi bu s Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East of His med Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day but bas Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain topsd fun, crui Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated, as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music itsdaq bollam, a b...ousbands, bor-out r "O it came o'er my ear like the sweet Southgədi: 71979 That breathes upon a bank of violets, furth oft-6j, 95 Stealing and giving odour! gos bolt og ofi-impro teom This is still finer, we think, than the noble speech on Music in the Merchant of Venice, and only to be compared with the enchantments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their operation on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Ariel to the brutish

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20: t Haengd og 7. to geeft gif 293791l997) * If the advocates for the grand style object to this expression, we shall not stop to defend it: But, to us, it seems equally beautiful, is obvious and natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber into the pale dawn. The word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs, her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy of cand verses; and she could not be called the cand of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed: into lamps. If we should read, "The lamps of heaven are quenched, wax dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of the expression would be lost: as our fancies would no longer be recalled to the privacy of that dim-lighted chamber which the lovers were so reluctantly leaving.

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Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies; and thus exhorts his less poetical associates—

"Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,

Would make me sleep again."

Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon, are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character and describe his situation more briefly and effectually, than any other words could have done. In this play, indeed, and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely, to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays generally to the forest scenes in As You Like It-the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale- several entire scenes in Cymbeline, and in Romeo and Juliet-and many passages in all the other plays as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking — the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image as this, at the portal of that blood-stained castle of Macbeth?

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"This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved masonry that heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutting frieze,

Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird

Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle."

Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horrors that are to be enacted within. There is no hint of any such suggestion-but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality -- because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene

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before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that emphatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Macbeth says,

"Look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it."

And in that proud boast of the bloody Richard — "But I was born so high:

Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun!"

The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon.

"Will these moist trees

That have out-liv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste

To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit?"

No one but Shakespeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope-any more than the following into the mouth of a mercenary murderer.

"Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in their summer beauty kissed each other!"

Or this delicious description of concealed love, into that of a regretful and moralizing parent.

"But he, his own affections Counsellor,

Is to himself so secret and so close,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.”

And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are, than we feel at once their beauty and their effect; and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and attractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen, into the mouth of one who is not even a lover.

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"It is her breathing that

Perfumes the chamber thus the flame o' th' tapere
Bows towards her! and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied

Under the windows, white and azure, laced

With blue of Heaven's own tinct! on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops.

I' the bottom of a cowslip!"

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But we must break at once away from these manifold enchantments and recollect that our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with the great and gifted author on whom he is employed: And, to avoid the danger of any further preface, we shall now let him speak a little for himself. In his remarks on Cymbeline, which is the first play in his arrangement, he takes occasion to make the following observations on the female characters of his authorje bi ti dodol sl to nor mit

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"It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakspeare's heroines, that they seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves; because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespeare· no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise- no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant: For the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex; scrupulous of being false to their vows or truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want of prominence and theatrical display in Shakespeare's female characters, from the circumstance, that women in those days were not allowed to play the parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage-heroines."

His remarks on Macbeth are of a higher and bolder character. After noticing the wavering and perplexity of Macbeth's resolution, driven on, as it were, by the

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